Velleitie
by pariloo
Summary: Touka Kirishima adopts a job teaching creative writing—at a maximum security prison. It is a world she has never experienced before; one ruled by enigmatic codes of honor, ceaseless aggression and absolutely savage violence. But one of the prisoners there is unlike any of the others. [AU where Touka is human and Kaneki is a ghoul. Eventual Touken]
1. the boy

『Author's Note;』

2/21/15

So today I stubbed my toenail on the corner of a table and it started bleeding profusely. Amidst the heart-wrenching pain, however, I got the idea for this story!

Weird, really...

I'm still unsure of how I feel about this whole thing. Tell me what you think. I always love hearing what you guys have to say.~

Enjoy!

* * *

**_one_**

The prison was hard to miss, so far out of scale to everything else that it could have been funny in another context, like a little kid's first stab at drawing a dog, say, where the ears might grow all the way down to the ground.

The blank white-washed walls were thirty feet high, maybe more, and ran on and on, right next to the sidewalk. Touka caught the tops of guard towers jutting out over the street. Just before the end, the wall made a ninety-degree angle, then formed a recessed three-sided area with the barrier in the middle. She parked on the street and wandered up to it, shoes clacking on the cobblestone underfoot. The gate itself was a black oblong, the paint so thick that she couldn't tell if it was wood or metal.

One last thought entered the heliotrope-haired girl's head.

_Are you supposed to knock?_

* * *

**_two_**

Touka stepped through the metal detector as the two guards dumped her bag out on a table: spiral notebook, two Bic ballpoints, cell phone. The guard swept the pens and the phone on the tray with her license and keys, shoving everything else back.

"No pens?" she asked.

"Had a pen sticking in B-Block. Right in the eye, too. I know 'cause I was there," one of them replied in heavily accented English, his eyes flat and expressionless, as if killing a man didn't even scrape the surface of his soul.

"What are we supposed to write with, then?" Touka doesn't bother hiding her contemporary surprise, or her slight annoyance. Her neutral expression mushrooms into something irritated and then clenches. Slammed brows, squeezed lips.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

Then the second sentinel opened the door closest to him and spoke.

"Step on through and we'll get going."

* * *

_**three - prologue  
**_

The room was small and very bright; fluorescent lights, cement-block walls and floor, metal shelves half-full of dilapidated books, mostly paperbacks. In the center of the space stood a rectangular steel desk, bolted to the floor.

On card-table chairs around it sat four people in blue jumpsuits; one at the far end, one on the left side, two on the right; all spaced as far from each other as they could be.

"Hi," Touka says, although it comes out more as an imperceptible breath to steady her heart. "I'm Touka. The new writing teacher."

They looked at her as she took a seat near the end of the silver counter; but not in the eye. A no-no.

"Maybe it would help if you all introduce yourselves," she breathes.

Silence.

Then the man on the left—with strangely colored eyes filled to the levees with almost-tears for no particular reason, slicked over blonde hair—sniggered. "Introduce? I know these guys already, way too much!"

One of the men on the right—bulky, thick eyebrows, wispy mustache, long black hair—laughed deeply. The woman next to him—skinny, purple-haired, young—played with a fingernail carelessly. How could things go wrong so fast?

Touka shifts in her seat like a crow fluffing out its wings. The only thing she's missing is the pissed-off caw.

Then, lastly, the man at the end, sitting up very straight, oddly-hued oculars directed at Touka's forehead, interjected quietly. "Tatara."

"Nice to meet you," she nods. "What's your last name?"

Tatara shook his head, a controlled, deliberate movement; there was even something regal about it.

The large man with the curtain-like hair leaned forward. His forearms were huge, bulging with cords of muscle. "You now entering a last-name zone."

"Kirishima," Touka blurted. "And yours?"

He only blinked, muttered, and said nothing.

"Just call me Rize," the woman from the other end replied, clearly uninterested.

"Call me Naki!" The man from the left joined in, raising an excited arm in the air, voice orotund. "Call me Naki! Naki!"

Touka only nodded, shooting Tatara an expecting glance. The man remained silent and composed, ignoring her gaze all together. It ticked her off, but nonetheless, she was here just to do a job. Nothing else.

"Okay, let's get started with—" she began, before being cut off by the sharp sound of footsteps behind her. She turned, saw an inmate coming through the door, and some man who she suspected was a Sergeant following close behind.

"This here's Ken," stated the male sternly. "New student."

The sudden intrusion makes Touka unbalanced.

But what shakes her up even more is the newcomer's appearance; terribly chapped lips, unruly, chalky-white hair with bangs hanging in his face, slight bags under dead, olivine eyes that seem so dull in vibrancy. That wasn't all. Jet ebony adjourned the moons of his fingernails and looked even darker in contrast with his skin; an extremely pale tone that only seemed right in belonging to an unhealthy patient in a hospital.

He stared, a hard stare with real physical force that Touka could feel, even though it was directed at nothing.

_Remember to speak._

"Ah. I'm Touka Kirishima," she chokes, rising and holding out her hand. "Welcome to the class. Sit anywhere."

Ken shook her hand; quick, impersonal, exerting no force. Just that.

She pores over his figure with one up-down swipe of the eye and doesn't know what to think.

His eyebrows laid straight, giving him that perpetual expression of nonchalance, while those cracked lips remained slightly parted as if he were trying to get some extra oxygen. His prominent chin found itself inclined downwards ever so slightly, deep-set eyes shuddered to keep anyone from looking through their windows.

It was almost as if the weight of his shadow was enough to drag him down; purpose was a distant thought, lost behind a mountain of fatigue. From how it looked, anyway.

He wasn't as tall as Naki or Kamishiro either, 'nor was he so bulked up; his built was a lot thinner, much more on the starved side, but somehow held quite a bit of muscle all the same.

The pallid stripling gave a hasty gander around the room with dead eyes and Touka doesn't know if she should just choose a spot for him after all.

There was an empty seat beside Naki and another beside Rize...but even despite such, Ken took neither. Instead Tatara rose and willingly moved over to Rize's side, leaving the milky-white of a boy to finally lower himself into the seat that had opened itself.

He cracks a knuckle and everything is silent.

For a second.

"Be good," the Sergeant directs to Ken, turning to give Touka a knowing look before leaving the room.

She almost didn't hear the words that were said before he disappeared past the threshold.

Almost.

_**"Be careful now. He's a feisty one."** _


	2. the dictionary

『Author's Note;』

2/22/15

I wasn't going to update until a week from now, but why not? I had nothing to do today, so I just decided to write another chapter.

Thank you for the follows, favorites and reviews. I'm so much more excited to continue this now!

* * *

_**one**_

It was quiet.

Touka had a plan for today's class, but her belief in it was weakening. She passed out the pencils, plus blank sheets of paper for everyone. Kamishiro crumpled his into a ball. Touka almost flinched; maybe she did, a little.

"I thought," she began, "we'd pick something to write about, then each read our work aloud at the end. Any ideas?"

A long silence. Kamishiro and Tatara were sitting very still, Tatara with his eyes closed, Kamishiro with his hands balled into fists. Rize was cleaning under her chipped-pink polished nails with the point of a pencil, while Naki began to blubber about his own writing utensil that he somehow already managed to break in half.

Ken spoke over the sobs of the wailing, child-like blonde. He had a quiet tone, quiet and soft. "Car wrecks," he responded blankly.

Kamishiro's head snapped forward, bilious. "What did you say?"

"She asked for ideas," Ken remarked simply, bangs falling into the vision of those grim-pitted olive eyes. His features somehow cooled ten more degrees. "Car wrecks is an idea."

Touka could hear Kamishiro's feet shift under the table. For a moment, she imagined he was about to spring up.

"Unless someone's got a better one," the white-haired boy interjected, voice modulated and once again empty. He leaned his head back to look down the ridge of his nose at everyone.

The look was enough to introduce an even more taut silence throughout the space, with the exception of Naki's snot-filled sniffles. It was Tatara who broke the uncomfortably palpable web of tension.

"Time is running out." Tatara leaned forward, wrote in capitals at the top of his page: CAR WRECKS.

"...Everyone agree?" Touka cautiously asked, pushing her dark curtain of hair behind one ear.

No one said anything.

"Anyone disagree?"

Quiet.

"Then car wrecks it is," she nodded, taking out a pencil and a sheet of lined paper for herself.

"Hey," mumbled Naki. He wiped the tears that streamed down his face with the back of a hand, octaves trembling because he'd just finished crying. "You're writing, too?"

"Sure," muttered Touka. She flattens out the paper with one hand. "Didn't your old teacher?"

"No," rang Rize's voice from the other side of the table.

"Oh."

"But we've forgotten all about him," reassures Tatara.

"A fag," Kamishiro calls aloud, referring to their old English teacher of course, but looking at Ken.

* * *

_**two**_

Touka thought about car wrecks. It really was a good idea. Supposing, for example, you and someone you had to make a big decision about were driving somewhere, and just at the crucial moment you passed a horrible wreck and make up your mind. You could go either way. The wreck ruins the relationship or else reveals its necessity. Touka knew she'd have to compress everything to get it done in class, but maybe she could expand it later. She glanced around.

Except for Kamishiro, everyone were bent over their papers, Rize already half-finished.

She began to write.

_The bridesmaids were all a little drunk, _Touka scribbled. _The honeymooners were on the plane to Hawaii and most of the guests_—she raised her head and pinched her eyebrows together.

Kamishiro was on his feet, moving toward the bookshelves behind Ken. Everyone else was writing. He saw her and a sneer touched the corners of his lips.

"I need to check a word," he whispered, reaching up for a big dictionary. He moved very smoothly for such a heavily muscled man.

Touka gave him an encouraging nod and set back to work.

—_most of the guests had gone home._ And it's one of the guests who dies in the wreck? How would that work? Sentence number two and already the story was shifting under her feet, in that maddening way stories had. Well, why not try it? _The mother of the bride was a little drunk, too. She sat in the car, shoes off, waiting for her husband. As he came across the parking lot, she saw that one of the maids, the pretty one with the_—

Something made her glance up. Not a sound, not a movement; something much less obvious, like a change in barometric pressure. And what Touka saw, her mind had trouble taking in. First because it was so far outside anything she'd seen before, second because it happened so fast, and third because of the expression on Kamishiro's face; an expression that brought a word to life: _murderous._

For the bulky man was no longer at the shelves, but standing right behind Ken. He held the heavy dictionary—_Webster's Third New International, _unabridged, the dark-haired girl noticed—high over the flinty boy's head. Ken, busy writing, the pencil wriggling fast, almost a full page nearly covered, was completely unaware.

Then, just as Kamishiro plunged the lexicon down with tremendous force, chest muscles bulging with the effort, Ken moved.

He must have, because the heavy piece of literature struck the table with a heavy imploding sound like a hand clapping hard over a human ear.

Ken was no longer in his chair.

Instead, he and Kamishiro were somehow on the floor, out of sight. Then came a crack that reminded Touka of wishbones on Thanksgiving Day but routed through an amp turned up all the way, and Kamishiro screamed at the top of his lungs something she didn't catch.

The next moment, Ken was back in his seat, rolling both shoulders as if trying to coax a knot to untwist itself.

The moment after that, a guard was rushing into the room, reaching for the things on his belt.

"What the hell's going on?" he shouted.

Except for Kamishiro, they were all in their places, pencils in hand. Even Naki was actually writing...with the broken half of his pencil that held the lead, that is.

Touka made a vague sound in her throat, suddenly feeling as if she were going to throw up, and harshly bit the inside of her cheek.

Ken looked down at Kamishiro. "I think this guy hurt himself." A suspicious little half-smile curved his lips upwards, barely visible; even so, she caught it and it's subtle existence.

And, frankly, it sounded to Touka as if he'd measured his words with a teaspoon.

The guard circled the table, eyed Kamishiro squirming on the floor, and inquired the entire situation. "How?"

"He was checking a word in the dictionary," Ken answered lowly, expression blank and deadpan once again. "Must have tripped."

Tatara got up, picked the hefty publication off of the floor, unwrinkled the pages, and laid it on the table. "Heavy," he interpolated noiselessly.

"You're telling me the book_ tripped him?_" interrogated the sentry, a crinkle settled between both brows.

Rize shook her head, hair tumbling down her shoulders in waves. "Didn't see it happen myself. The weight must have surprised him, coming off the shelf."

Kamishiro remained groaning on the ground.

"The weight of a book?" scoffed the man, hand receding from his gun in its holster. "Kamishiro? He bench-presses four hundred pounds."

Naki looked up from his work, pearls forged from frustration curling at the corners of his eyes. He sniffles. "Angle makes a big difference. It should've been on a lower shelf."

"Heavy book like that," muttered Tatara.

Kamishiro finally rose, his face white, right arm hanging out to the side a little. His left hand supported the elbow; gently, as though it were a baby's arm, easily damaged.

"What's with your arm?" the guard questioned once more, pointing.

"Twisted it in the fall," surmised Rize. She turned her head to one side but kept those predatory eyes on the guard.

"Wasn't asking you," snorted the male, glancing to Kamishiro. "Did you twist it in the fall, Matasaka?"

Kamishiro stood still for what seemed a long time, quiet except for the guttural sounds parading from the back of his throat; his skin glistened with slight sweat, arm out of the shoulder socket; Touka could see the ball joint, pressing the fabric of his blue sleeve.

Ken was writing, colorless fringe veiling the top half of his face. Eyes on his work, he stated blatantly, "_Internal combustion..._What he was looking up."

_What?_

The guard threw a disbelieving glance Ken's way. "He was looking up _internal combustion?_"

The chalky-haired boy nodded, cracking a knuckle.

It was a sharp sound that caught even Naki's short-spanned attention.

The guard, then, completely oblivious, swiveled around to Touka. His face was hard. "What did you see, Miss?"

Somewhere in the prison a man started laughing, a shrill cackle that went on and on and on.

"It all happened so fast," she stated slowly, trying to calm her augmented pulse. Her voice wavered somewhat at the end, a little unsteady.

**"I really couldn't say."**


	3. the interruption

『Author's Note;』

2/23/15

Thank you all so, so much for supporting this story. More updates coming soon!

* * *

_**one**_

All the students were already in place: Ken at the far end; Rize on the right; Tatara in the middle with Naki; and on the left, his arm in a sling, Kamishiro.

"Hello, everybody," Touka began to say, but her esophagus had closed up and she had to clear it and try again.

"Hi, teach," Kamishiro said. "I'm back."

He gave her a look that Touka read as friendly and nothing else. She started handing out the pencils and papers.

"All stoked up for writin'," the bulky man hummed, a deep growl that emerged from the back of his mouth.

"What would you like to write about?" she inquired everyone gently, settling behind a desk that sat a few feet away from the silver table they all sat.

"Dunno," Naki piped up, taking a pencil and sticking it behind his ear. "I just wanna write and write! Oi, Ms. Kirishima! Am I a good writer? Am I?!"

"Mh-hmm," the heliotrope nodded half halfheartedly, throwing the excited man a conservative grin. Then, tilting her head to one side, she called aloud, "Anyone else have a suggestion?"

Ken shook his head.

"How about dusty death?" Rize catechized, tapping her interminable fingernails on the table; the never-ending clicks resounded throughout the room. Tatara threw her a grimace with one eye, but the woman relentlessly continued.

"What the hell is dusty death?" Kamishiro muttered, flicking a thick brow.

Touka glimpsed to Ken, a look for help, as though to the only other sensible person in the room. No help there: Ken was bent forward in concentration, already writing.

Now she was the one flicking an eyebrow.

"You found something to write about?" the female asked him, leaning forward a bit in interest. It seemed Ken was the only one who actually had both the sense and drive to take action at the earliest of times.

Still, there was no reply. The boy's pencil raced across the page, scratching out a faint sound like skiing in soft snow. Something made Touka glance at Kamishiro; he was watching Ken, too. That huge vein in his forearm throbbed.

"Oi, you," said Rize in her soft rumble. She tapped on his shoulder. "Teacher's talking to you."

Ken looked up. The pencil kept going on its own for a second or two, like a primitive life-form with its head cut off. He made an ill-defined noise in his throat, eyes glazed over.

"She asked you a question." Tatara's rejoinder came fast.

The ivory-haired stripling turned to her, eyes unfogging. "Sorry," he muttered.

Touka squared a shoulder, repressing the urge to swallow thickly. "Nothing to be sorry for. Did you...find a topic?"

Ken glanced down at the page, half-covered. "Yeah."

"Maybe we could all take a crack at it," she insisted.

"Crack," giggled Naki, making a little sniggering sound.

"We writin' about crack?" chimed Kamishiro.

"That's unbefitting for a prison enviroment," came Tatara's calm voice, sounding a bit confused. The man plucked at his sleeve curiously.

Rize cocked her head to the side, twirling her lilac hair with a finger. "What about crack?"

"No. We're writing about cops," Ken corrected softly, running a thoughtful line with the pencil's eraser along his jaw. Thoughts passed behind his eyes like shadows.

"Cops?" Touka resounded, blinking. _Why would an inmate want to write about cops? Shouldn't they hate them?_

Ken's face took on a phlegmatic air as his chin dipped into a doleful nod. "We all know something about cops."

"Amen!" Naki yelled, squirming in his chair.

"Teacher here don' know," Kamishiro said.

"Huh?"

The muscled-man rephrased the words. "What's she know about cops?"

They all looked at her.

"...I once got caught shoplifing," Touka muttered.

Everyone instantaneously perked up.

"Yeah?" said Rize. "Rings? Watches? Nail-polish? Cosmetics? _Money?_"

Touka shifted in her chair. "...Twizzlers."

"What the hell's that?" Kamishiro grunted.

"Ooh! Licorice candy," answered Naki. "I've seen it in the store before!"

Silence.

"T-This was the green kind, though," Touka coughed. She felt as if she were chained to the words that just left her mouth. "I'd never seen the green kind before..."

Ken was smiling. Well, sort of. His lips were just barely quirked at the corners; but they still _were_, so it counted. Kinda.

"How old were you?" Tatara asked.

"Fifth grade," she muttered. "I must have been ten."

"What did the cop do?"

Touka twisted her lips to the side. "Er...He told me that if I ever did anything bad again he'd tell my parents."

Kamishiro twitched. "That it?"

"...And he said to stop crying."

Everyone chortled at that.

Then, of course, a guard stepped in.

The laughing quickly ceased to a stop.

"This must be where the fun happens," the male said, eyes narrowed. He crooked a finger at Kamishiro. "Got a minute?"

"Class ain't over."

Touka thought she saw Kamishiro's fists clench.

"For you it is," the man riposted.

Kamishiro shook his head. "Not going anywhere."

Three COs in riot gear pressed into the room, a hard wedge of clubs, shields, helmets. Then, out of nowhere, Kamishiro jumped up and slipped his arm out of the sling. The guard took Touka firmly by the shoulder and pulled her out of the way as the COs crept forward with short precise steps like a six-legged organism. They bellowed at Kamishiro: "Turn around. Hands on the wall."

But instead Kamishiro lashed out with one of his legs, a tremendous kick that sent a shield flying across the room. He obdurately dove straight into the chock of people, his gargantuan fist pounding deep into the gut of the shield-less CO.

The others struck back with their clubs, whacking him in the chest, the head, his bad shoulder. Touka felt a discomfort in her own shoulder, but it was only the guard's hand, squeezing hard. Kamishiro cried out, went down. They fell on top of him, whacking and whacking.

From the outer side of the table came a roar unlike any Touka had ever heard, deeply inhuman and savage at the same time. Naki vaulted right over the table with a cackle, grabbed one of the card-table chairs, and swung it at the backs of the COs struggling with Kamishiro on the floor. It flew so hard it blurred in the air.

Now a CO cried out.

Kamishiro yelled, voice guttural as if mixed with mucus, "Rip his head off!"

Then the one guard that had been standing next to Touka was bringing his own club down on the back of Naki's head, promptly releasing a wave of sobbing and screeching from the man.

A few minutes later, they were all gone; Kamishiro, Naki, Rize, and even Tatara.

It wasn't long before an extra sentry sauntered into the space, glancing all around before blinking at the dark-haired girl. "You all right?"

Touka nodded. She realized she was squeezed up against the wall and came forward a little, legs still not quite steady.

Even through all of this, however, there Ken remained sitting in his chair with both pale hands folded on the table, fingers with black nails fitted together. A flat expression lay on his face, gaze far away. Distant.

_He hadn't moved the whole time._

"I'll walk you back," the security man offered without a second of hesitance, turning towards the door. He pointed over his shoulder towards the motionless Ken. "I'll call someone to come get him."

Taking an adrenaline-frenzied breath, Touka checked the clock on the wall.

"Class isn't over," she said, feeling—somewhat crazily—very alive.

* * *

Oooooooooo! Touka's all alone with Kaneki!

What will happen next? :0

Find out in the next update!

Thanks for reading!


	4. the phone number

『Author's Note;』

2/25/15

I'm snowed in my house today so I went ahead and typed this up for you guys! We're supposed to get 10-15 inches tonight where I live, so I may be able to post another chapter tomorrow!

Thank you all _so much_ for your endless support! I really, _really_ appreciate it!

So, without further ado, chapter 4!

Enjoy!

* * *

_**one**_

In the room: Touka at one end of the table, Ken at the other; plus the wall clock. A very old wall clock, she noticed for the first time. The vermillion second hand paused with a click sixty times a minute, audible to her now with just the two of them in the room.

"You don't have to finish the hour on my account," Ken interposed. A slowness had overcome his voice from the last time he'd spoken.

Touka took a breath. "How about showing me what you've written?" she offered, chewing on the inside of her cheek. It had become a habit now, the soft flesh sore and raw from constant biting.

The girl watched as Ken steepled his fingers, bore a measured countenance, inclined in the chair a little to the right, drew in a long breath before letting it hiss out slowly_. _A few ticks had echoed around the space before he_ finally_ replied ruminatively, "I understand if it shook you up."

He looked her in the face, then away, and back again. Their gazes met; as they weren't supposed to in prison. A slight change in his eyes; not a weakening of their power—a combination of animal and intellectual, unique in her experience—more like it was being directed somewhere else. _Those_ eyes; still so surprisingly dark, but dull and pale too, like a third or forth-generation reprint. "Scary stuff like that," he added.

"You didn't seem scared," Touka pointed out.

And it was_ true_, because he hadn't looked scared at all. In fact, he'd been sitting stewed for a moment as everything went on, acting like nothing was taking place before him; simply acting as if someone had drawn a veil over his shape and _not a thing was seen. _

"I'm used to it," the boy murmured, blinking past the fringe of unpigmented hair crossing his sight. "But there's a big gap between what just went down and your Twizzlers caper."

"What did just go down?" she questioned, indigo eyebrows crinkling together in a rueful grimace.

"They want to talk to him." He'd clipped his answer short, tried to avoid looking at her; Touka noticed and she frowned slightly.

"About what?"

Ken locked every bone tight at that, almost as if he'd hoped she wouldn't have asked. The male switched his stare to lay straight ahead and rubbed a thumb over his fingers continuously.

"...Have you heard about the last English teacher that was here?" He swiped his tongue over his cracked lips as he said so.

Touka blinked and tried to re-swallow her stomach. There was something reptilian about the look he was wearing. "No."

"She was killed. In this very room."

Ken shifted and Touka's eyes shattered into thousands of pieces that ricocheted around the room, capturing a million snapshots, a million moments in time. She's stiff and can't meet his eyes and looks down at her paper. "W-What?..Meaning they think Kamishiro was involved?..."

A hand flew up to his chin and rested there for a second. "Oh, Kamishiro did the teacher in, all right," he muttered. His palm glided downwards then, something Touka thought was odd, and her gaze naturally followed the movement.

He was folding his sheet of writing paper, making an airplane. And then he spoke, once more.

"The question is why it took them so long to figure it out."

Her throat tightened again with something familiar to her, something she's learned to swallow.

Quiet.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

His silence said so much. She could almost reach out and touch the unidentifiable feeling that grew on his shoulders.

_Tick tock. Tick tock._

**More quiet.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

_..Something wasn't right._

And Touka knows, because now she could clearly see the way Ken's hands slightly trembled. A cleft had formed between his eyebrows, and those haunted eyes were glaring down at the paper airplane that his digits fumbled to make at an extreme pace.

The clock ticked a few more times. Ken finished his paper plane, sleek and tapered, making a tiny adjustment on one of the swept-back wings: a beautiful plane, actually.

But now his hands were _really_ shaking.

And then, before Touka could look away, those two dull orbs shot back up and met her own; almost at once his fists shot under the table and out of view. He'd caught her staring.

She felt her face getting really hot.

_Oh, now she'd done it._

However, to the girl's surprise, Ken didn't lash out. All he did was hold her gaze before making a clicking sound in the side of his cheek. Then, slowly, he raised his hand from underneath the desk, and for a moment Touka expected him to be holding a knife; instead, that same paper plane nestled itself nicely between his fingers. Then, without warning, he flicked it across the table. It flew in a long curve and glided down in front of her, landing smoothly.

Touka unfolded it and read:

**_The Cop Who Busted Me_**

_Let's call him Haru, maybe not as good a name as any, but it fits. Haru knocked on my door and said, "Police. Open up or we break it down." Or some similar cop hello that I didn't hear over the sound of the vacuum. Housework time, and I was just finishing up the family room. I'm happily going after dust balls under the tray table and the next thing I feel is his hard muzzle at the back of my head. Am I expecting company? No. That explains my overreaction and I don't even recognize Haru till he's down. Course he has backup; they work me over for a bit, completely understandable, no problem. Then Haru's back in the picture, a little different with missing teeth. One of them is in my hand; I've been clinging to it during the working-me-over part for some reason. He asks the big question, the one where the corpses are. I can only laugh._

Touka looked up. Ken was watching her closely, listening with his entire body.

"Where did you learn?" she said.

"Learn what?"

"To write a short story like this."

"Is it any good?"

"Don't you know?"

He shook his head.

"Did you go to college?"

"Mm."

"You did?"

"Yeah," Ken nodded. He touched his lips with two fingers. It's a gesture Touka can't grasp.

"You must have read a lot, growing up," she mutters, rereading the first half of the story to herself again.

A weird noise came from Ken's throat just then, loud enough for her to catch it and glimpse up at him. His jaw muscles jumped at her ogle; it was like the stripling was trying to keep something from coming out of his mouth. Urgency pulsed at his temples.

He swallowed thickly and both oculars flew somewhere else as they clouded.

Touka looked down and examined her palms; their fine lines and individuality, because anything was better than making eye contact with him.

_Was what she was saying bothering him? And why?  
_

Deciding that ignoring Ken wasn't the way to go, she glimpsed back up, only to find that his had features relaxed again; his expression was neutral, both elbows on the desk before him, sitting and staring at her attentively. She cleared her throat to will the lump in it to disappear and spoke slowly,

"What do you like to read?"

A sense of relief and gratefulness washed over her as Ken answered in his usual tone of voice. "Right now I'm going through a Takastuki Sen phase."

Touka had heard the name before, couldn't quite place it. Ken rose and went to the shelves, brought over a rather new paperback with a hard-eyed gunslinger on the cover. He set it on the desk in front of her.

"Never read it," she hummed.

Still standing behind Touka, the chalky-haired boy responded coolly, "I like the wide-open spaces."

His words were paraded by more silence.

_Something's so so so wrong._

The mauve-haired girl promptly felt a funny feeling down her spine, as though someone had blown into her ear; it was like every vertebra in her spinal column had become a block of ice. Eyes widening and fingers twitching, she lowered her voice; she's only 10 inches away from spontaneous combustion.

"How did you get my number?"

On his arm, where Touka could plainly see it, were digits written in red pen across the skin. They were large and neat as if done without a single care in the world. What was even worse was that the numerals were recognizable.

Her phone number.

She swallowed the hot bile that filled in her throat, a feeling like stage fright churning her insides, threatening to let loose her breakfast from that morning.

"Information," Ken softly countered, lowering his voice, too; and now she actually felt his hot breath dance across the shell of her ear. "Is there a problem?"

Touka stood abruptly, her profile hot with both fear and rage. She's freezing through her clothes. "In terms of preapproved lists and calling collect, there is," she spat. "Not to mention cell phones."

"Yes," Ken replied, voice chilly with no clear sense of emotion whatsoever. "Better left unmentioned." His lip quirked at the ends. "But in terms of being the writing teacher, is there any issues there?"

Touka thought about that. She was still thinking when Ken backed swiftly away. A guard stuck his head in the room.

"Time." he bellowed.

Ken placed the book back on the shelf, starting for the door. He paused then, legs going into arrest as his body swiveled to face her. "Touka."

His voice hugged the letters in her name so softly that she died 5 times in that second. He continued, subdued,

"Any chance I could get my writing back?"

Touka bit her lip, stared at his hair, eyes, face, entire _body_ for what felt like an eternity before reaching onto her desk and picking up the wrinkled paper. She handed it to him. His fingers brushed hers and the skin feels scorched everywhere he's not touching her.

_They were sickeningly cold._

"Thank you," he murmured on his way out.


	5. the smeared red lipstick

『Author's Note;』

3/13/15

So sorry for the late update guys! I didn't mean for it to take this long!

School has been super stressful for me lately and life in general has been a little weird.

But I finally found the time to type this chapter!

Also, I try to reply to every review I get. If I forget yours, please don't take it personally! You're like my children and I don't want to hurt your feelings. ; w ; (I hope that wasn't creepy omg)

Thanks so much for your patience and enjoy!

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_**one**_

Kamishiro on the left, his arm no longer in a sling, hair long and oily; Ken at the end, his black shirt wrinkle-free and fixed perfectly to the neck; Naki, back on the right, a faint white film on his lips; and beside him, Tatara.

"What's satire mean?" asked Kamishiro impatiently, the vein in his forearm doing the jumping thing.

Touka stood at the front of the room, staring back at everyone with a lavender filled gaze. "It means making fun of things that need making fun of," she answered directly, giving him a tolerant smile.

"Huh?" asked the bulky man, eyebrows furrowing.

"Like Bugs Bunny," the heliotrope-haired girl smoothed the fabric of her shirt. "He does it all the time."

One of Tatara's beautiful hands made a little movement and Naki spoke, obviously tired for some unknown reason. "Reciteee a poem of youuurss."

"Recite?"

"For Rizeeee."

"Where is Rize, anyway?" inquired Touka, frowning. Rize hadn't missed a class before.

"Gone but not forgotten," concluded Tatara, his dark eyes flickering to meet hers.

"Dead?"

Kamishiro started laughing. "Rize's dead," he sniggered, voice guttural. "Just the opposite. She got herself promoted."

Had the woman somehow gone from solitary straight to freedom?

She raised an eyebrow. "Where to?"

"Attica."

"That's a promotion?"

"Better chow." The man smiled to himself at that, throwing the same grin to Ken. He leaned towards the chalky-haired boy, breath stirring the pale strands. "What do you like to eat, _Ken?_"

The boy said nothing.

"Asked you a friendly question," Kamishiro spoke up, voice raising a little. "Got no tongue? Not what I hear."

"Recite," chimed Naki out of the blue, making Kamishiro fall silent. Drool appeared at the corner of his mouth. He slumped forward, rested his head awkwardly on the steel table. No one seemed to notice.

Touka swallowed. Every muscle, every tendon in her body went fraught with tension and tied into knots that clenched her spine. She stayed very still. Didn't move. Didn't breathe. Maybe if she didn't move, this weird feeling would pass.

Then it came to her. Pope. She had taken a full semester of eighteenth-century poetry in high school, but only one measly line came back to her. "'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,'" she said aloud, blinking back hair from her vision.

"I thought that was a song."

Touka knew from the first syllable: Ken.

It was weird to her, because he didn't have one of those rich, gruff voices. His had other properties...less governable, maybe, like magnetism.

Scared at first, but then telling herself that this male was her student and she was here to do _one_ job only, willed her heated orbs to look into his face even though they strained to turn away. Red spots flared on her cheeks and suddenly there's an urge to smash the world into oblivion.

The blank-haired young man was sitting up straight like an attentive student, hands folded on the table, nails black as ever. His jaw was set and features carved into a careful expression. The female noticed something about him, how dark his eyes suddenly were, given his complexion. A striking effect, like from some specially compelling portrait: How had she missed it?

"That came later," Touka choked. Butterflies caught fire in her stomach, an inexplicable humiliation searing at her flesh. She caught the rose petals as they fell from both cheeks, as they floated around the frame of her body, as they covered her in something that felt like the absence of courage.

_Stop looking at me_, is what she wanted to say.

_Stop touching me with your eyes._

Keeping his actions trimmed short and subtle as always, Ken nodded, his eyes barely blinking, eyelashes long, white, and beautifully tipped with silver from the artificial lights that glared from the ceiling overhead.

Naki groaned.

Glad to have a reason to look away, Touka glances to Naki. "You all right?" She tapped her lips with her fingertips, still a little wary in knowing that Ken was staring.

He didn't answer.

"Psych drugs," muttered Tatara.

"Mean shit," Kamishiro added.

Ken didn't seem to care. "What are we writing about?"

"Well," Touka croaked, her eyes still on Naki, "I'm not sure we should—"

"He's safe in dreamland," Ken drawled.

Deciding that having one inmate not contribute for the day wasn't the end of the world, Touka started around the table handing out paper and pencils, laying Naki's near his head. "I was thinking we could write about an important person in our lives."

"What do you mean?" Kamishiro asked.

"It could be anybody, from any time in your life," she continued. "A parent, teacher, coach, friend—you choose."

The man frowned. "How come?"

Ken was already writing. The boy, head still down, had picked up his pencil. Even from this angle, she could tell that his eyes had drifted half closed.

"Shh," the girl put a finger to her lips and pointed to Kamishiro's paper.

"Shh?" asked Kamishiro. There was a pause. Then he laughed: in a good mood today it seemed, although Touka had never heard laughter more aggressive. He slid his paper into place, reached for a utensil.

That's when she grew aware of someone watching her.

Who?

Ken, of course. "You writing too?" he solicited.

"Of course." Tucking that same curtain of hair behind one ear, the young teacher started back to her desk.

The inmates, except for Naki, were all writing. Even Tatara. The space grew quiet, a strange feeling creeping into the room like once before, as if the atmosphere had came from somewhere else.

Normally Touka did some thinking—maybe even too much—before she felt ready to form word one. But right now, for some reason, she couldn't think. It was as if her mind was blocked. Empty. A few minutes passed and then twenty; still, nothing entered her brain. It was such an unsettling feeling, like—

"All done," boomed Kamishiro all of a sudden, throwing down his pencil. "Want me to go first?"

Ken didn't look up. He'd put down his pencil at once.

Touka checked the time. Ten minutes till noon? She hadn't even started writing and the time was almost up. Oh, well. "Sure."

The herculean cleared his throat, hunched over his page. With enormous effort, as though fighting a gravitational pull, he blew a little fleck of something off the page and started. _"An important person in my life was this one guy I knew. He was the first man I ever beat the shit out of. All he had to do was give me that look. Then the bell rang."_

The man looked up, doubly quiet, fighter and artist. Silence in the room.

Touka was confused. Was that it? Clearing her throat, she asked, suddenly nervous again. "The bell rang?"

More silence.

Then Ken spoke up, causing Kamishiro to toss a hate-filled glare his way. "Send over that sheet, Naki. I'll read it for you." His voice sounded fuzzy, like he was one scotch short of drunk.

Naki suddenly sat up, wide-awake, and handed the sheet to Ken.

Looks like he did write after all. The white-haired male read it aloud.

_"Bugs Bunny is my favorite influence. He thinks fast and doesn't take anything from anyone. When that man came after him with a shotgun, Bugs bit off some carrot and shoved the rest down the barrel. Elmer Fudd also talks weird. I don't know why. I try to think what Bugs Bunny would do when I get in some situation but it always comes to me too late or maybe never. Thanks for reminding me of Bugs Bunny, teacher. Sometimes I forget."_

Ken handed the paper back to Naki.

"That's good," Touka nodded.

The blonde turned to her, still salivating. "Yeah?"

Kamishiro scoffed. "What? Bugs Bunny isn't even real for fucks sake."

"True," Tatara interjected.

Ken rose. "That's no way to talk to the teacher," he muttered.

Kamishiro pushed back his chair.

"Sit down, please," Touka vocalized. This wasn't good. "We can express ourselves freely here and I have no problem with—"

A guard came through the doorway. "Time's up."

They all turned to him.

Naki spoke. "We were just getting started."

"Oh, then excuse me," the sentinel derided, tone sarcastic. "I'll come back some other time."

Everyone took that as a cue to get up.

10,000 tiny particles shattered as Touka reproached. "It always goes so quickly. Must be a good sign. Just five me what you guys wrote. I'll get it all typed up and we'll start with...someone else next time."

She collected the pencils. Everyone filed out while she did so; Kamishiro first, face blank, then two more blank faces, Naki's and Tatara's. Then came Ken. He gave her his sheet.

There was an ache in the pit of her stomach that gnawed on all nerves. She wanted to hate and judge him, but the only result was failure.

Her lips formed a tight line. "Sorry we didn't get to you."

He smiled ever so slightly and Touka would like to take a picture.

She'd also like to stare at the curve of his dry lips for the rest of her life.

"Don't worry about it." Those dark eyes, but not like coal: instead, some harder rock and much more polished, but olivine, too. Turning then, without another word, he stalked out of the room.

. . . .

Something very strange was going on out the door, something hard to take in all at once. Touka knew even before she placed the writing utensils on her desk and approached the threshold. She could feel it. In fact, it came to her in pieces; first, an inmate who looked like Kamishiro—same size, same enormous arms covered in tattoos, differentiated mostly by a burn scar covering half his face—talking to the guard, his tone aggrieved.

Second, the security guy, with an irritated look on his face.

Third, Naki and Tatara drifting across the sleek floor of the great domed room. Fourth, Ken, moving in another direction, toward some inmates in the distance. He didn't see: five, Kamishiro, leaning tight to the wall, right by the door, behind the sentry's back. And what was that in his hand, held at waist level?

Six, a pocketknife.

The heavy man lunged forward.

And that's when he drove the knife into Ken's back, between the shoulder blades. But not quite between the shoulder blades, because Ken was already turning, and the blade struck on the left side, into his shoulder.

For a moment, everything slowed down to no motion at all. Kamishiro and Ken, half-turned, were looking right into each others eyes, as though participating in something intimate. The small knife stuck out of the milky-haired boy's back an inch or two.

Kamishiro leered, taking the heel of his palm and sliding the knife the rest of the way in.

Then, Ken, face neutral and voice normal, bloomed to life.

_"You can't write for shit."_

Kamishiro stopped grinning, but traces of it were still lingering when Ken punched him with his right fist, very hard and from point-blank range, a punch that landed on the bulkier man's left eye, the middle finger right on the eyeball.

Obviously surprised, the sizable hombre staggered back into Touka full force, knocking her down.

The back of her head hit the hard floor. Everything went white for a moment. A strapping wave of noise roared in and the whole prison seemed to shake. The dark-haired girl managed to roll onto her side, and through the thick, white veil clouding her eyesight saw Kamishiro beside her, head turned sideways, the undamaged side up. A foot swung into the picture and stamped on the man's face, caving it in with the sound like a broomstick cracking.

It took every broken filament in Touka's being to rise to her knees. The image of Ken, blood pouring down his arm, appeared. He stood over them and for a second his eyes connected with hers.

That eye, that _one cursed eye_ scorched her skin through the layers of fabric and she inhaled so fast her lungs collapsed. Her limbs went numb, felt amputated because of the crippling horror that sewed itself into her bones. Touka Kirishima was caught in colliding currents of confusion at the sight; pupil **_dead dead dead red_** and **_burgundy_** and _**maroon**_ and the **_richest shade of your mother's favorite lipstick_** all smeared into the center of a jet black sclera.

She screamed.

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_The sun touched the horizon, flattened out, wobbled, and lost its shape._


	6. the teacher who died

『Author's Note;』

6/7/15

Hey you guys! I apologize sincerely for taking months to update. School has beaten me to death and I'm just trying to get through this week. I'm getting out on the 12th, though, so that means more updates! I also apologize for this chapter being so short. I'll be sure to make up for it.

I've decided to take a step back in time with this chapter, a little after (if you didn't figure it out already) Ken killed the prison's old English teacher, whom he had been in love with.

From Ken's POV, I present to you chapter six!

Enjoy!

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_**one**_

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I'm so so sorry. I'm sorry I'm so sorry please forgive me.

It had to be done.

Forgive me.

_Please forgive me._

There is little I allow anyone to discover about me. There's even less I'm willing to share about myself. And of the many things I've never discussed, this is one of them.

I like to take long showers.

I've had an obsession with cleanliness for as long as I can remember. I've always been so mired in death and destruction that I think I've overcompensated by keeping myself pristine as much as possible. I take frequent showers. I brush and floss three times a day. I scrub my hands and nails before I go to bed with a bar of soap from commissary and just after I wake up. And whenever I'm experiencing any extreme level of emotion, the only thing that settles my nerves is a hot shower in the prison bathroom.

So that's what I'm doing right now.

The prison medics taught me how to bind my injured arm in the same plastic they used before, so I'm able to stand under the shower-head without a problem. The warm water makes me feel weightless. It carries my burdens for me, understanding that I need a moment to relieve my shoulders of this weight. To close my eyes and relax.

I don't open my eyes; only my nose and lips meet the oxygen on the other side. I take small, even breaths to help steady my mind. It's so late that I don't know what time it is; all I know is that the temperature has dropped significantly, and the cold air is tickling my nose. It's a strange sensation, to have 98 percent of my body floating at a warm, welcome temperature, while my nose and lips twitch from the cold.

I put my face under the falling drops.

I could live here, I think. Live where gravity does not know my name. Here I am unbound, untethered by the chains of this life. I am a different body, a different shell, and my weight is carried by the hands of friends. So many nights I've wished I could fall asleep standing under this sheet of hot rain.

In one week my life has changed.

My priorities, shifted. My concentration, destroyed. Everything I cared about had revolved around one person, and for the first time in my life, it had not been myself. Her words have been burned into my mind. I can't stop picturing her as she must've been, can't stop imagining what she must've experienced as I dug my hand deep into her chest cavity and devoured her heart.

Her finding out about me, who I am, had crippled me. There was no way I could let anyone else know.

She always loved to talk.

And I could not let me, a _ghoul_, become the topic of that conversation.

I could not trust her.

I can not trust_ anyone._

Even now that's she's dead and gone, I want her to know that I understand. She and I really are the same; in so many more ways than I could've known.

But now she's out of reach. She's dead and has gone somewhere with deceased strangers who do not know her and will not care for her as I would. She's been dropped into another foreign environment with no time to transition. She's been _murdered_ by _me._

I lift my head up too fast.

Dizzy, I push my wet hair out of my face and lean back against the tiled wall, allowing the cool air to calm me, to clear my thoughts.

The futility of these past few days has washed over me, dulling my senses, settling me into a kind of daze I haven't been able to claw my way out of. Every day I wake up searching for a solution to the problems I've forced upon myself, but I have no idea how to fix this.

The prison authorities have no idea what to make of this.

All they could do was claim her death a mystery, despite finding her body torn apart, her vermillion blood filling up the majority of that white room, because of course it's a mystery. _Of course_ it didn't look like a murder. But it did. _It most definitely did._

They could've tried to serve her justice. Open a case. Tried to figure out who killed her.

But they didn't. And it pisses me off to no end how they would let _me,_ a person so cruel and so messed up and so so so _disgusting_ get away with something like that.

And now, I've gone numb.

I've been performing my tasks with a sort of mechanical dedication; it requires minimal effort. Moving is simple enough. Eating flesh is something I've grown accustomed to.

I can't stop reading her notebook.

The notebook I stole from her desk that night.

The night she found out.

The night I killed her.

My heart actually hurts, somehow, but I can't stop turning the pages. I feel as if I'm pounding against an invisible wall, as if my face has been bandaged in plastic and I can't breathe, can't see, can't hear any sound but my own heart beating in my ears.

I've wanted few things in this life.

I've asked for nothing from no one.

All I'm asking for is to harbor another chance. An opportunity to see her again.

It won't happen.

But still...it's strange being in her head without being able to see her. I feel like she's here, right in front of me. I feel like I now know her so intimately, so privately. I'm safe in the company of her thoughts; I feel welcome, somehow. Understood. So much so that some days I manage to forget that she's the one who put this bullet hole in my heart.

I almost forget that she probably hates me now, despite how hard I've fallen for her.

And I've fallen.

So hard.

I've hit the ground. Gone right through it. Never in my life have I felt this. Nothing like this. I've felt shame and cowardice, weakness and strength. I've known terror and indifference, self-hate and general disgust. I've seen things that cannot be unseen.

And yet I've known nothing like this terrible, horrible, paralyzing feeling. I feel crippled. Desperate and out of control. And it keeps getting worse. Every day I feel sick. Empty and somehow aching.

Love is a heartless bastard.

I'm driving myself insane.

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**_two_**

I eventually fall backward onto my cot, finally dressed into my jumpsuit. It's scratchy and makes my skin crawl.

My head hits the lumpy pillow and I blink once. Twice.

I imagine I'm wearing warm clothes and sitting by a fire. I imagine someone's given me a book to read, a story to take me away from the torture of my own mind. I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind. I want to run, to feel the wind tug at my hair. I want to pretend that this is just a story within a story. That this cell is just a scene, that these hands don't belong to me, that this window leads to somewhere beautiful if only I could break it. I pretend this pillow is clean, I pretend this bed is soft. I pretend and pretend and pretend until the world becomes so breathtaking behind my eyelids that I can no longer contain it. But then my eyes fly open and I'm caught around the throat by a pair of hands that won't stop suffocating suffocating suffocating-

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My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound.

My mind, I hope, will soon be found.


	7. the broken bars

『Author's Note;』

7/16/15

Sorry for such a long time before an update! Summer is actually a lot more busy than I anticipated.

But here's a new chapter back to Touka!

It's sorta short but please bear with me.

Thank you for your patience and enjoy! :^)

* * *

_**one**_

Touka's been hurt.

And, as it turns out, a concussion is even more uncomfortable than she had imagined.

Her skin is cold and clammy; she's making a herculean effort to breathe. Torture is roaring through the right arm she fell on and making it difficult for her to focus. She has to squeeze her eyes shut, grit her teeth, and force herself to pay attention.

The chaos is unbearable.

Several guards are shouting and too many of them are touching her, and Touka wants their hands surgically removed. They keep shouting "Mrs. Kirishima!" as if they're still waiting for her to teach them English, as if they have no idea what to do without her instruction. The realization exhausts her.

"I can't get up," the lavender-haired woman manages to say. She opens her eyes. "But I haven't gone deaf."

All at once the noise disappears. The guards shut up.

Touka coughs.

"Alert the medics, please," the teacher tells them, shifting, just a little. The world tilts and steadies all at once. "No. Wait...Take me to Ken. Please."

Two of the guards run off to the prison infirmary while another stays behind to watch her. He doesn't say anything about her other request.

"What happened to him?" she blurts almost automatically. It's getting harder for her to speak. She takes a small breath and runs a shaky hand across her forehead. She's sweating in an excessive way that isn't lost on her.

The young woman is suddenly too aware of everything in the air around her, the scents and small noises and footsteps outside the door. She hates the hard, tiled floor.

_Ken. What exactly happened..? He's a.. _

Her eyes flash a bright, dizzying white behind both eyelids.

That's when Touka realizes that her mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions. She can almost see her brain as it functions, filing thoughts and images away. She locks away the things that do not serve her. She focuses only on what needs to be done: the basic components of survival and the myriad things she must manage throughout the day.

But Ken..

_What was he?_

* * *

_**two**_

The dark-haired woman with a bandage around her head runs four fingers along the jagged edges of the torn-apart cell bars, careful not to cut herself. There's no design to it, no premeditation. Only an anguished fervor so readily apparent in the chaotic ripping-apart of this barrier. She can't help but wonder if he knew what he was doing when this happened.

Ken ripped through these bars..something a human clearly wouldn't be able to do.

The guards and prison staff are saying he could've possibly had a tool to melt the metal and escape. But this was a maximum security prison; how would anyone get a tool like such past hundreds of guards, let alone escape without being caught?

She doesn't believe it.

With heavy eyes, she carefully catalogs the dimensions of the hole; she tries to imagine what it must've been like for him, to be here, trying to get through. Touka wants so much to be able to talk to him about all of this.

Her heart twists so suddenly.

She's reminded, all over again, that he's no longer here. He does not live in this place anymore.

And to her..it was her fault he was gone. She'd allowed herself to believe she was finally teaching well and it affected her judgment. She should've been paying closer attention to details. To her students. She had lost sight of her purpose as an educator and her greater goal; the entire reason she came to the prison.

Touka sighs.

Ken was a soft, deadly creature. Kind and timid and terrifying. Touka's enchanted by his pretend-innocence; jealous, even, of the power he wields so unwittingly. She wants so much to be a part of his world. She wants to know what it's like to be in his mind, to feel what he feels. It seems a tremendous weight to carry.

And now he's out there, somewhere, unleashed on society.

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_What a beautiful disaster._


	8. the window that burst

『Author's Note;』

10/20/15

Hey everyone! I apologize for not being able to post any other chapters...I have been ill lately and my mental health hasn't been the best. I found some time in my day today though, so here's another long-awaited chapter!

Thanks for reading! :^)

* * *

_**one**_

"Ken," Touka whispers. "What are you doing here?"

The woman's half-dressed, getting ready for her day, and it's too early for visitors. These hours just before the sun rises are her only moments of peace ever since the accident that had happened at the prison around a month ago, and no one except herself should be in her room. It seemed impossible..he gained access to her home.

But still, there he was; the white-haired boy standing in her doorway, staring at her. She'd seen him so many times back the the jail, but this was different—it's causing Touka _physical pain_ to look at him.

"I'm so sorry," he says, and he's wringing his hands, looking away from her. "I'm so, so sorry."

Touka's again struck by how impossible it is that he's here. In her bedroom. Staring at her when she doesn't have a shirt on. His chalky hair is so long it falls past the middle of his neck; she has to clench her fists against this unbidden need to run her hands through it. He's so beautiful.

It's tragic.

And Touka still doesn't understand why he keeps apologizing.

He shuts the door behind him. He walks over to her. Touka's heart is beating quickly now, and it doesn't feel natural. She does not react this way with any other person. She does not lose control. Touka used to see him every day just 4 weeks ago and had managed to maintain some semblance of dignity, but something was off; this wasn't right.

Ken's touching her arm.

He's running his fingers along the curve of her shoulder, and the brush of his skin against her own is making her want to scream. The pain is excruciating, but Touka can't speak; she's frozen in place.

The dark-haired English teacher wants to tell Ken to stop, to leave, but parts of her are at war. She's strangely happy to have him close even if it hurts, even if it doesn't make any sense, even if it's true that he's...different.

Ken looks at her.

He searches her with those odd, olivine eyes and Touka feels guilty so suddenly, without understanding why. But there was something about the way he looked at her that always made her as a human feel insignificant, as if he's the only one who's realized she's entirely hollow inside. Ken's found the cracks in this cast she's forced to wear every day, and it petrifies her.

That this boy would know exactly how to fracture every bone in her body with just his presence alone.

Staring at her, he gently rests his terrifyingly cold, pallid hand against her collarbone.

And then he grips her shoulder, digs his jet-black fingernails into her skin like he's trying to tear off her arm. The agony is so blinding that this time Touka actually screams. She falls to her knees before Ken and he wrenches her arm, twisting it backward until she's heaving from the effort to stay calm, fighting not to lose herself to the pain.

"Ken," she gasps, "please—"

As if on cue, he runs his free hand through her mauve hair, tugging her head back so she's forced to meet his unmitigated, bitter eyes. And then he leans into Touka's ear, his cracked, blanched lips almost touching her cheek. "Are you afraid of me?" Ken whispers.

"What?" Touka breathes. "What are you doing—"

"I said are you scared of me?" he asks again, his subzero digits now tracing the shape of her face, the line of her jaw.

"No," she chokes out. "I'm not—"

Ken smiles.

It's such a sweet, innocent smile that Touka's actually shocked when his grip tightens around her arm. The whey-faced stripling twists her shoulder back until Touka's sure it's being ripped from the socket. She's seeing spots when he says, "It's almost over now."

At that moment, his one eye melted into an inky black, the iris being enveloped, almost wrapped, in a cardinal glow; angry vermilion burned through the cornea.

"What is?" Touka asks, nearly gagging on her spit, frantic, trying to look around. "What's almost over—"

"Just a little longer."

"No—no, don't go—where are you going—"

"It won't hurt," Ken intrudes, voice bland. "I promise."

"No," Touka's gasping, "no—"

All at once Ken yanked her forward, and Touka's awake so quickly she can't breathe.

She blinked several times only to realize she's woken up in the middle of the night from a dream. Absolute blackness greets her from the corners of her room. Her chest is heaving; her head is still bound in bandage and pounding, and she realizes the pain medication for her month-old concussion has worn off.

The bile at the back of her throat burns. She swallows it down and shakily wipes her bottom lip. Her head feels like it's cracking open, like an archaeologist is trapped inside, chipping away at the bones of her skull. The woman leans back against the headboard of her bed and tries to hold it together; the migraines, the nightmares, her sanity.

Her world is falling apart.

It takes all but a few moments for her breathing to stabilize. For her thoughts to slowly retreat from panic.

Ken.

She can't control a nightmare, but in her waking moments his name was the only reminder she'd permit herself.

The accompanying humiliation will not allow her much more than that.

Touka stares at the ceiling. Hardly breathing.

And then the window in the corner of the room bursts and shatters into a million pieces.

* * *

_**two**_

A figure steps in, boots cracking over the crushed glass. It stops and turns towards Touka's bed.

He's staring at her. He's actually here, staring at her, his eyes tired and dull. It's been a month since she's last since him, but it feels like years.

Touka's brain is suddenly made of lead, nerves stretched thin. No," she hears herself say. "You're not supposed to be here."

She's rooted to her mattress, unable to move.

And just then, Touka suddenly feels like she's having another nightmare. She opens her mouth to shout, to fight, to swing her fists, but her vocal cords are cut, her arms are heavy and weighted down as if trapped in wet cement.

The woman waits for him to kill her; to end it like every single outcome of every single bad dream she's had about him, just so she can wake up.

But he doesn't wrap his hands around her throat, rip the flesh from her neck, or devour her body whole.

Because this is reality. She's not dreaming. This isn't another nightmare where she can just wake up and go on with her day.

_The truth stings._

Touka flinches as he steps forward, hair billowing in the wind breezing in from the shattered window, arms at his sides. She's almost convinced he's a zombie, just as dead on the outside as he was on the inside...until he speaks.

His voice is heavy as if this is something he's regretted doing, something he's been thinking unhappily about for decades.

Touka presses her fist to her mouth as the words fall from his chafed lips in broken syllables and crash onto the floor like glass china plates from a shelf.

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_**"We need to leave."**_


	9. the punch

『Author's Note;』

12/23/15

Hi lovelies! Thanks for all the reviews AND your patience! I would've updated sooner but I had to get emergency surgery for my appendix and school has been very stressful. So finally, here's chapter 9 of Velleitie. Enjoy! :^)

* * *

_**one**_

The ground is hard.

Touka knows this to be an actual fact because it's all of a sudden pressed against her face and Ken is trying to grab her but _she thinks she screams and slaps_ his cold hands away. The teacher can feel the revulsion bubbling up and unsettling her insides but she knows _she has to ask the question._ The brain in her head is breaking open and she's staring at a spot on the carpet not ten feet away and _s_he's not sure she's even alive but Touka knows _she has to hear his answer**.**_

_"_Why?"

She looks up to him and sees nothing but unspoken letters on his lips, gunmetal eyes that refuse to reveal their secrets.

Touka knows she's tearing at the seams.

And, as if on que, freezing, inhospitable hands, _so so so so strapping_, grab her by the arms.

Her body locks.

Her bones, her blood, her brain halt in place, seizing in some kind of sudden, uncontrollable paralysis that spread through her so quickly she can't seem to breathe. She's heaving in painfully strained inhalations, and the walls won't stop swaying in front of her.

Ken silently pulled Touka into his arms, slinging her like a backpack over his shoulder.

_He was so strong._

"Let go of me!," the young woman screamed, but only in her imagination because her lips were finished working and her heart had just expired and her mind had gone to hell for the day and _his eyes his eyes his eyes_—

The tears are fresh and falling fast now, traveling quietly down Touka's cheeks and into her open, gasping mouth. Her shoulders won't stop shaking, fists clenching, body cramping, old habits crawling out of her pores. She's counting cracks and colors and sounds and shudders and pounding Ken's back.

More voices from outside the window. Ken throws a look towards the shattered mess, corners of his lips dipping downwards more if even possible, each iris dripping with venom from the intensity of the stare he was giving.

"They're coming."

His voice is chilled and there's a pinch of vexation; it's tone sprouts branches that sweep up Touka's neck, into her ears and twines itself around her brain. Before she could reply or inquire his words, Ken effortlessly swung her around to face him, frame not moving even a centimeter at her blows of self-defense.

"You're giving me no choice."

1

2

3

A fist connects with her face.

* * *

**_two_**

Pain.

Touka's blinking and it seems to take forever. She sees an unfocused series of images in front of her; lights swaying, stilted movements all blurred together. The whooshing of what seemed to be wind is warped, garbled, too high and too low for her to hear clearly. There are icy, electric bursts surging through the mauve-haired girls veins, like every part of her body has fallen asleep and is trying to wake up again.

There's a face in front of her.

She tries to concentrate on the shape, the colors, try to bring everything into focus but it's too difficult and suddenly she can't breathe, suddenly she feels like there are knives in her throat, holes punched into her lungs, and the more she blinks, the less clearly Touka's able to see. Soon she's only able to take in the tightest breaths, tiny little gasps that remind her of when she was a child, when the doctors told her she suffered from asthma attacks.

They were wrong, though; her shortness of breath had nothing to do with asthma. It had to do with panic and anxiety and hyperventilation. But this feeling Touka was experiencing right now was very similar to what she'd experienced then. It was like trying to take in oxygen by breathing through the thinnest straw. Like your lungs were just closing up, gone for the holidays.

Her fingers grasp at whatever is in their path and she finds a cluster of scratchy sheets.

She's on a bed. A very, very old bed. Or an ancient mattress. All the woman knows is that there's springs digging harshly into her back, amplifying her ache, and it's all she can think about.

Certainly aware of the dizziness and how it takes over, Touka allows the light-headed feeling to swathe her. The pain, the pain, the pain. The pain is terrible. The pain is the worst. The pain never seems to stop. There's a hard, sharp throbbing under her eye, which was more than enough for her pain tolerance to handle. But her head? The agony was rushing in overdrive through her skull, fireworks of supernovae exploding in 2 second interval currents.

Squinting, the ache growing piece by piece, the profile in front of her finally comes into view.

_It's him._

His features are so soft, so ethereal in the sunlight pouring in from what seemed to be a smashed-in window. His face is deceptively calm, so unassuming and glacial. His hair was unruly as ever, chalk white and to the base of his neck—a little longer since she'd last seen him.

There are so many things she wants to say to him. So many things she has to tell him. So many things she needs to know now, that she needs to sort through, that she has to decide.

Touka's heart throbs at the sight of him.

_He was so beautiful._

But what even stunned her more was what he was wearing. No longer were he sporting that blue prison jumpsuit; no, now he had on something different. It was a jet black, form-fitting outfit, the chiseled outline of abs and pure muscle rippling from underneath the fabric. Touka's breath came out in a tumble of exasperation, both because she were tired and caught off guard.

In his pallid hands sat a stark-white mug, pure in its entirety. His fingers gripped it tightly, so tight his knuckles looked bleached. Curls of steam erupted past the lip of the bland glass, but from her position she couldn't see what liquid it held.

Eyes cool, voice flat, Ken's chapped lips moved.

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_**"You're awake."** _


	10. the rusty door

『Author's Note;』

2/15/16

Hi lovelies! Thanks for all the reviews AND your patience! I would've updated sooner but I had to get emergency surgery for my appendix and school has been very stressful. So finally, here's chapter 10 of Velleitie. Enjoy! :^)

* * *

_**one**_

Touka quickly up-righted herself into a seated position and Ken shifts to accommodate her. She has to close her eyes to steady the sudden dizziness, but she forces herself to remain still until the feeling passes.

She's tired and weak from hunger, but other than a few general aches, she seemed to be fine. She's alive. She's breathing and blinking and feeling human and the young woman knows exactly why.

She meets his eyes. Her body is shaking.

Touka swallows. "Why haven't you killed me?"

That's when she's suddenly aware of the terrifying foreignness of this room and she's quickly seized by a panic that screams _I did not wake up in my apartment._ Her heart is racing and her body's inching away from him, hitting her back against the concrete wall, clutching at the dirty, scratchy sheets, trying not to stare at the blood stains on the walls and the flickering light above her head—

"It's okay." Ken is saying. "It's all right."

"What am I doing here?" Panic, panic; terror clouds the teacher's consciousness. "Why did you bring me here?"

"I'm not going to hurt you—"

"Then why did you bring me here?" Her voice is starting to break and she's struggling to keep it steady. "Why bring me to this hellhole—"

"I had to hide you." He exhales, looks up at the wall. The coffee mug in his grip tips to the side and a little of the scorching hot liquid splashes onto his pale, cracked hand. He doesn't flinch.

"Why?!"

"No one knows you're alive." He turns to look at her. His gray-ish green orbs stirs the insects in her stomach. "I had to get out of there. I was running out of time. I had no choice but to take you with me, before you went in to work at the prison the next day."

Touka forces herself to lock away the fear eating away at her.

She studies his face; cold, lips settled in a neutral expression, eyes dead. Then she analyzes his patient, wintry tone; free of anything except the freezing truth and the dullness of reality. All of sudden it sparks a memory; she remembers him from last night—it _must've_ been earlier that night—when he took her. She remembers his face, remembers awaking for a quick moment to see him sitting in a chair next to her in the dark, in this very room. He'd looked tender and gentle, back pressed against the wood of the seat, expression blank but...warm. He probably carried her into bed. Tucked her in beside him.

It must've been him.

But when she glances down at her body she realizes she's wearing new clothes and the young woman wonders who changed her and worries that might've been him, too.

"Did you..." Touka hesitates, touching the hem of the shirt she's wearing. "Did—I mean—my clothes—"

He stares blankly until she's blushing and she decides she hates him a little and then he looks back at a cracked window where moonlight is still pouring in. Looks down into the mug of which a swirling black liquid whirl-pooled. "I had to rid you of your scent," he says stonily. "It was necessary."

Touka's thoughts are on fire.

She tries to move and Ken's eyes flicker towards her. She's off-balance, unsteady; she still feels as though her legs are anchored to the bed and is suddenly unable to breathe, seeing spots and feeling faint. She needs up. Needs out.

"Ken." Her lavender eyes are frantic on his face. "What happened? What's wrong with the prison? Why couldn't I go, why did you _abduct me_—?"

"Please," Ken interjects, milky-white hair falling into his vision. "You need to start slowly; you should eat something. It's been awhile since your last meal. At least drink something." He offers the glass and she pounces to her knees, slapping it away, the coffee cup smashing onto the floor with a crash and obliterating into hundreds of slivers.

Ken blinks.

"What do you mean it's been awhile?!" The woman screeches, sweat forming beads on her temples.

The male's jaw muscles were jumping.

"Tell me you asshole!" Touka demands, fearful and angry now, voice coming out in a strangled cough.

She's terrified for his answer.

"You've been asleep for three days."

Touka's heart stops and breaks into a trillion pieces, imitating the coffee cup in its entirety. There's a long silence and then she can't take it anymore. She collapses into the mattress and embraces its painful springs this time, wanting the metal to engulf her and take her somewhere far from here.

Anywhere but here.

"Why..." She swallows. "...Why am I here?"

One moment. Two and three.

Ken is frozen and there's a moment of quiet. A sudden exhaustion seemed to draw his face down. A million more seconds. Then, right hand over left, black nails scraping at a piece of raw skin hanging off a finger, he replies. "It's gone," he says.

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_**two**_

"What?"

Touka says the word but her lips make no sound. She's numb, somehow. Blinking and seeing nothing.

"It's over," Ken repeats.

"No."

The teacher exhales the word, exhales the impossibility.

He nods. He's disagreeing with her.

"No," she raises her voice. "No. No. Don't lie to me, you bitch," she says to him. But now her voice is high and broken and shaking. "No, no, no—"

She stands up this time. Her eyes are filling fast with tears and she blinks and blinks but the world is Hell and she wants to scream because all she can think is how horrible it is, that eyes blur the truth when people can't bear to accept it for what it is.

Ken only looks at her with some sort of sorrow and pity yet still remaining deadpan, thoughts passing behind his countenance like shadows. "They're all dead."

That's when she breaks.

She finds feeling of her legs and jumps off the bed towards him, punching his chest and hitting him harder each time when she realizes he's not budging even a centimeter, her words bombarded by sobbing, shrieking, and the feeling of being_ so so so angry. _She's hyperventilating now. All those people...gone.

"Why didn't you help them?! You're a fucking disgusting monster. How could you let them die?!"

Ken says nothing.

And it pisses her off. It's only then when she realizes she's making the most excruciating, earsplitting sound, agony ripping through her. She wants to speak, to protest, to accuse Ken, to blame him, to call him a liar, but she can say nothing, can form nothing but sounds so pitiful she's almost ashamed of herself.

"Speak! Say _something, _goddammit!" Touka yells into his face, tears _drip drip dripping_ onto his jet-black suit, fists stopping their reign on his torso. "Fuck you..."

Still, no letters escaped from the breach of his mouth. He only watched her, expression 27 degrees fahrenheit, the skin around his eyes drawn tight, lips in a grimace.

_She hated him._

Quiet now, Touka stepped back and slumped on the edge of the bed, her head in her hands. That's when Ken continues.

"It's all been demolished," he says slowly, entire being dull. "Everything. They tortured some of the people. Then they killed mostly everyone in the facility and bombed the entire thing."

"Oh, God." Touka covers her mouth with one hand and stares upwards, unblinking, at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

"Liar," she interjects, venom dripping from the octaves in her voice. She's angry and mean and can't be bothered to care.

She glances at Ken just long enough to see the sorrow flash in and out of his eyes. He stands.

"You should rest," he says, tone firm, vague, and cold. He steps on the glass of the mug she'd broken earlier, high-pitched cracks filling the icy air, looking down at the shards momentarily before continuing to walk towards a rusty door at the end of the large place.

"Where are you going?" the mauve-haired girl asks, guilty in an instant.

She doesn't want him to leave.

She's scared.

_So, so scared._

"I need to be on watch for them." He turns the handle to the door, creaking open the old slab; even from across the room Touka can see the muscles ripple beneath the tight, black fabric. Her heart stops and then her brain registers what he'd said.

_Them._ Touka swallows thickly.

_The people who took down the prison._

"Please don't go," Touka blurts. The words even come as a surprise to herself.

Ken freezes at that, hair swaying with a bright sheen as he slowly looked over his shoulder at her, profile hard.

"I'll be back."

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_**The door shut with a loud bang and small strips of rust-confetti fell from the frame.  
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	11. the unraveling of ken

『Author's Note;』

2/22/16

Hey everyone! I typed up a new chapter while at school and it's a little bit longer than the others, so I hope that's okay! Please ignore typos/mistakes if any and enjoy! Thanks so much for reading! :^)

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_**one**_

Touka doesn't remember when Ken left.

She doesn't remember how he left or what he said. All she knows is that she's been curled up on that little mattress for hours. Long enough for the tears to turn to salt, long enough for her throat to dry up and her lips to chap and her head to pound as hard as the blood in her capillaries.

She sits up, feels nauseous, brain aching, muscles still numb but less so.

What had happened? Why had it happened? The prison had been destroyed with the flick of a switch.

Touka had made friends there, whether it were the prisoners she taught or the workers. Now everyone were gone. The woman felt empty and broken and cheated and guilty and angry and desperately, desperately sad.

And here she was. Trapped by a ghoul.

Ken.

The tears were fresh and falling fast now, traveling quietly down Touka's warm cheeks. Her shoulders won't stop shaking and her fists keep clenching and her body is cramping, knees knocking. She's counting cracks and colors and sounds and shudders and rocking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and she has _to leave to go to go-_

Touka closes her eyes and breathes.

Harsh, hard, rasping breaths.

She's been here before, Touka tells herself. She's been lonelier than this, more hopeless than this, more desperate than this. She's been here before and survived. She can get through this. She can escape.

But never has she been so thoroughly robbed. 7 months of love and possibility, friendships and futures: gone. She has to start over now; face the world alone again.

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_**two**_

Ken can't hide his surprise when he walks back into the room.

Touka looks up, folding her clothes over an arm. "I'm taking this back," she says to him.

He blinks at the mauve-haired teacher. "You're feeling better."

She nods over her shoulder. "My clothes were just sitting here, sticking halfway out from under the mattress."

"Yes," he says slowly. Carefully.

"I'm going to put them back on."

"I understand." He's still standing by the door, still frozen in place, still staring with those eyes of his. "Are you going somewhere?"

It's only then that Touka realizes she's already halfway to the door. "I need to get out of here."

Ken says nothing. He takes a few careful steps into the room, feet scuffling, echoing off the concrete walls.

Until he's right in front of her.

Hands by his sides, he looks down at Touka. The woman swallows thickly, fear suddenly sweeping throughout her muscles and ordering them to tense. "Where?" he asks.

"Anywhere other than here."

He sweeps the white strands of hair from his face, lips in a straight line, ebony fingernails contrasting against the milky color. "You can't."

She's getting irritated now.

Ken waits. Stares.

"Where are the people who destroyed the pri—"

"Not here."

"Oh."

She tries to hide her shock, but now she doesn't know why she was so certain that whoever took down the prison would be right outside or something. This complicated things.

"You really thought you could just walk out of this place," Ken scoffs, "find them, and kill them?"

Yes. "No."

"Who's the liar now," the ghoul says softly.

Touka dares to glare at him.

Ken straightens his posture at her acerbic glance, surveys her from the bridge of his nose. "They're ghouls, Touka."

She shudders at the way her name descends from his mouth and then freezes and feels idiotic at her sudden comprehension. Of course they're ghouls. He's a ghoul, too. She'd almost forgot. And that's when Touka's suddenly apprehensive again. These people eat humans. Flesh. _Ken eats humans._

The woman has to shake a petrifying feeling from her spine, scatter the fear from the cells of her brain. He hasn't killed her yet. But why not? Even a better question, why had he saved her in the first place?

She's quiet for about 6 seconds before inquiring him.

"They needed a reason to destroy the prison. Why did they do it?"

"They're looking for me," Ken vocalizes.

Her lips pull into a thin line.

He isn't lying. She can tell.

"How do you know? And why?" She quizzes.

A straightforward, stiff frown. "I imagine they must be."

"You didn't answer my other question," Touka points out. "Why?"

Ken is looking at her closely. Robotically tilts his head slightly to the left; in fact the movement had been so minuscule, she'd barely picked up the motion. "They want me dead."

Touka's heart is in her throat.

"Why?" she croaks again for what seemed to be the millionth time.

"I haven't figured that out yet."

His fingers are twitching and Touka takes a small step back in caution. Was he hiding something? Touka didn't care to ask. Her mind was running at 100 miles per hour. Too many questions pried at her.

"What if you're wrong?" The educator whispers, too afraid to hope. He doesn't answer.

That's when she gathers all the courage, audacity, and valor she can muster before reclaiming her place before him. "What if you're wrong?" she solicits, louder now. "What if?"

"That seems highly unlikely." He almost looks like he pities her, pities her misunderstanding and deadlocked hope.

"But there's a chance, isn't there?" She's desperate. "If there's even the slightest chance they're not ghouls but local terrorists or—"

Ken sighs. It's the second time she's heard him do that before, and it's cloaked with so much exhaustion and burnout it nearly knocks her over. Runs a hand through his overgrown bangs. Touka's first thought is how attractive he is when he does that. Her second thought is how she hates herself for thinking so.

"If you'd seen the devastation the way that I did, you wouldn't be saying such things."

Touka's knees have begun to buckle. "It could've been a bunch of psychotics who've been planning to do that for such a long time," she hears herself chortle. "They must have had some kind of plan. A place to hide and weapons and they could've escaped from a mental hospital—"

"No—"

"Dammit, Ken! Stop! Just...You have to let me look! There may be survivors, there may be people who found a way out!"

He won't meet her eyes. His tone is gritty. "It's dangerous for you to think there's a chance anyone might still be alive."

She stares at his strong, steady profile, his form-fitting black suit that made her heart pound, his olivine eyes flashing with thought as they studied her face.

"Please," Touka whispers.

He's quiet for a moment before confirming.

"I have to head to the area of the prison in the next day or so to see if anyone's hanging out there." He tenses as he speaks. "The destruction of the penitentiary has caused the loss of many lives," he says. "Too many. The city is understandably traumatized and subdued."

A tight breath.

"The body parts that have been propelled from the explosion are currently being cleared out and incinerated. We need to give it a few days until all the workers are gone. Then we'll go."

There's a hefty silence between them.

"While I'm overseeing the rubble to make sure no one is around," Ken interjects, slicing the hush to bits, "You can look. And then, once you have proof, you will have to make your choice."

"What choice?"

"You have to decide your next move. You can stay with me," he says, hesitating, "or, if you prefer, I can arrange for you to live undetected, somewhere on unregulated grounds. But it will be a solitary existence," he says quietly. "You will never be discovered."

"What will happen if I do neither?"

"The individuals know you're with me," Ken begins. His eyes turn to slits. "Then they will find you, make you give up my location, and kill you."

"Oh."

A pause.

"Yes," he says.

Another pause.

"You don't know me," Touka mumbles. "I could hide. I could live. You think you know me just because I was an English educator—you stupid, prying, privacy-stealing asshole—"

"Oh, right—about that." All of a sudden, one quick hand plucks the clothes Touka had forgotten she'd been holding out of her arms and Ken moves toward the door. "I'm burning these."

"Hey!" she protested, swiping at him as he walked away. "You said you'd give that back to me!"

"I didn't say that," he replied blankly, subdued, a white blouse and pair of jeggings in a fist. "Now please wait here a moment. I'm going to get you something to eat."

Touka's shouts are cut off by the iron slam of the door as he closes it behind him.

Defeated, she falls backward onto the uncomfortable mattress and makes an angry noise deep inside her throat. Chucks the scratchy blanket at the wall, and, for the first time, catches a glimpse of her outfit. She realizes she must be wearing some of Ken's old prison clothes when he weren't wearing a jumpsuit. She's drowning in a faded grey T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that almost falls off her hips every time she stands up straight. She takes a moment to regain her equilibrium before stepping off the poor excuse for a bed, rolling the waistband of the pants a few times, just until they sat snugly at her hip bone, and then she balled up the extra material of the T-shirt and knotted it at the back.

She's vaguely aware that she must look ridiculous, but fitting the clothes to her frame gave her some modicum of control and she clings to it. All she needed now we're a hair clip, to get her pesky bangs out of her face.

She spins around at the sound of the door.

Touka's caught in the middle of a thought, holding her bangs up with both hands in a makeshift hairstyle, and suddenly acutely aware of the fact that she's not wearing any underwear.

Ken is holding a rusty tray.

He's staring at her, unblinking. His gaze sweeps across Touka's face, down her neck, her arms. Stops at her waist. The young woman follow his gaze, only to realize that her movements have lifted her shirt and exposed her stomach. And she suddenly understands why he's staring.

The memory of him changing her—

Oh.

Touka drops her hands and hair at the same time, the mauve curtain falling hard and fast against her cheek. Her face is on fire and colors like a peach in the sun.

Ken is suddenly transfixed by a spot on the wall directly above her head.

"I should probably cut my fringe," she says to no one in particular, not understanding why she's even said it.

He doesn't respond. He carries the tray closer to the bed and it's not until she spots the glasses of water and the plates of food that she realizes exactly how hungry she is. Touka can't remember the last time she ate anything; She's been surviving off the energy recharge she received from sleeping for three days.

"Have a seat," Ken says, not meeting her eyes. He nods to the floor before folding himself onto the concrete. Touka sits down across from him. He pushes the tray in front of her.

"Thank you," she says quietly, her eyes focused on the meal. "This looks delicious."

There's tossed salad and fragrant, colorful rice. Diced, seasoned potatoes and a small helping of steamed vegetables. A little cup of chocolate pudding. A bowl of fresh-cut fruit. Two glasses of water.

Touka looks up suddenly, feeling the weight of Ken's gaze. He's staring at her like he's intrigued, fascinated. "What are you thinking about?" he says aloud.

Touka stabs a piece of peppered potato with a fork. "I'm thinking if I should eat this."

She just had to ask the question.

"Did you...Did you kill someone for this? It makes no sense. You bring me a meal fit for a queen in this drab of a place." She glances up at the flickering lights and bloodstained walls and shivers.

He looks confused. "No. It's called going to the store."

Right. He can still shop.

Touka shoots him a dirty look and shovels the potato in her mouth. Chews, swallows.

She thought the revelations had come to a close for today, but she was wrong again. It makes her wonder just how much is left, and how much more she'll learn about Ken in the coming days. Months.

And she's scared.

Because the more she discovers about him, the fewer excuses she has to push him away. He's unraveling before her, becoming something entirely different; terrifying her in a way she never could've expected.

Touka stabs a piece of fruit and peeks at him through her eyelashes. He's still gaping at her, silent. She vigilantly lifts a small chunk of melon to her mouth and pauses, speaking. "Why are you so quiet all the time?"

Ken leans back a little, fingers running across his chapped lips in thought. His eyes droop and for a second Touka is afraid he's going to pass out.

He verbalizes, voice dense and leaden with something Touka can't understand.

"I'm only quiet because I'm worried that if you push me too far, one day I will open my mouth and I will scream so loudly, it will shatter and break the whole world."

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_**"Oh."**_


	12. the empty feeling inside

『Author's Note;』

7/4/16

I know I haven't updated in a LONGGG time and I'm super sorry! Here's the new chapter!

* * *

_**one**_

Touka shuffles through a pile of newly-bought clothes Ken had apparently forgotten he'd purchased days before, grateful for the first time to have clean things to change into. The heap of diverse attire consisted of loose shirts and pants, but it's also been stocked with socks, bras, and underwear. And even though Touka knows these types of things should make her feel awkward, somehow it doesn't. The underwear is straightforward and understated. Cotton fiber basics that are exactly standard and perfectly functional. He'd bought these things before she'd woken up from her three day sleep, and knowing that they weren't purchased with any level of known intimacy makes Touka feel less self-conscious about it all.

The mauve-haired woman grabs a small T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and all of her brand-new underthings, exactly her size, and peels off her current clothes until she's bare. Suddenly, she remembers she hasn't showered for at least five days, and the thought slightly grosses her out.

How did Ken expect her to do anything around here? For God's sake... The little place _did_ have a bathroom, but it was grimy and only had a crusty old toilet and a sink.

However, it wasn't like Touka to whine and complain about her situation; so, she grabs a t-shirt from her new pile, bundles it up, and walks to the itty bitty bathroom. There she turns on the sink and runs the cloth under the cool water before using it to wipe down her body. She thinks about how her and Ken would venture out tomorrow to see the prison as she runs the bundle of wet cotton over her legs. It was a bittersweet, exciting thought; to finally be able to see what Ken was talking about.

After a minute or so, Touka throws the damp material to the floor, flicking extra droplets off her fingers. To her surprise, the makeshift sponge-bath actually grants her some hygienic relief. Huh. Who would've thought.

Next, she throws on her new clothes. She hasn't worn jeans in awhile, so at first the material feels strange to her. The fit is so tight, so tapered; Touka has to to bend her knees to stretch the denim a little. But by the time she tugs the shirt over her head, she's finally feeling comfortable.

So comfortable that she actually jumps when the sound of an iron door opening interrupts the silence.

It's Ken.

Touka stumbles out of the restroom and stands by the doorway. Ken is standing there, looking her way. He's holding something and Touka doesn't know what it is until he walks up to her and holds it in front of her face.

It's a Hostess cinnamon bun.

"Here's breakfast. Sorry it's nothing special."

Touka blinks at the offering, glancing from the 7-11 staple and back to him. This morning he looked awful; his eyes were leaden and heavy, deep bags settled under each ocular. His face was usually pale, yes, but today it seemed even more white than usual, however possible that was.

It's until he shakes the wrapped sweet in his hand impatiently as if saying 'hello?' and blankly gazes at her with a halfway irritated look does she slowly take the cinnamon bun from his grasp.

"Thanks," Touka mutters.

That's when she realizes the blood staining the corner of his mouth. She stares at it, bones shifting to planks of ice, and instantly imagines Ken, _a ghoul,_ tearing into someone, ripping off their flesh and cracking open their ribcage, _eating eating eating eating__—_

He seems to notice her frightened gaze and reaches up with a pallid hand to wipe his lips, the dried blood streaking across the two severely-chapped fleshy parts of his mouth as he does so.

Touka's speechless. She knew he was a ghoul, but actually realizing that this was no joke terrified her.

"You ate someone," the young woman choked out.

Ken is silent. Looks at her blankly.

"You killed someone and ate them. How can you do that so easily? How can I even _trust___—"__

The boy speaks up, his tone cold. "I have never claimed to live by any set of principles," Ken says to her. "I've never claimed to be right, or good, or even justified in my actions. The simple truth is that I don't care."

Touka flinches at every syllable, at how unnervingly calm he was speaking.

Ken continues, "I have been forced to do terrible things in my life, and I am seeking neither your forgiveness or your approval, because I do not have the luxury of philosophizing over scruples when I'm forced to act on basic instinct every day."

Silence fills the room between them.

_He was right._

Once he figures the woman won't say anything in return, Ken spins around and begins walking to the door.

Touka then comes to the conclusion; Ken did not ask to be born a ghoul. He did not ask to only be able to survive on people's flesh. He did not ask to be filled with an urge to murder. He did not ask to live like this. He did not ask to be a killer.

_He didn't ask for any of this._

"I was never really that afraid of your touch," Touka all at once blurts. "I mean, not too much, at least..."

Ken stops in his tracks, frozen. She knows he's listening. She's got his attention.

"In fact, I... sort of came to welcome it when I first awoke here. I was so sure you would eventually strike out at me, that you would try to defend your way of living by lashing at me; and I can admit that I wasn't going to look forward to that moment. But...you never did." Touka pauses, searching his frame for any sort of reaction. Almost as if by the will of her eyes, he gradually turned to face her.

With a renewed vigor, she progresses. "Everything I'd seen about ghouls informed me that you were unrestrained, vicious creatures. I was expecting you to be an animal, someone who would try to kill me at every opportunity—someone who needed to be closely watched, to be feared. But you proved otherwise to me by being too human."

His eyes are unfocused. His chin tilts toward the ground and a heavy shadow covers both olivine orbs.

"Stop."

Touka startles at his voice; it's not blank anymore. It's full to the brim with an emotion, an emotion so heavy it were as if it was dripping from his lips. She breathes it in, breathes in his cloaked agony, breathes _him _in.

"I want you to know that I would like you to do whatever you have to in order to live."

Ken sucks in a sharp breath at her words and clenches his fists, silent once more, before turning on his heel and walking out the door.

* * *

_**two**_

Ken follows close behind Touka as she stumbles across some crushed concrete. Anyone would be able to find the prison now. Any human being, any civilian, anyone with functional vision would be able to tell you where the large crater is located.

He was right.

Touka breathes in, feels like she's moving through some thick, invisible fog, like her legs have been formed from fresh clay. She fails to account for the sudden slant of rubble and nearly falls face-first into the debris.

This is it.

The vacant, barren stretch of land Touka had come to recognize over the past 7 months as the area just around the prison; the land that was once lush with foliage and vegetation.

Now it's a graveyard. Skeletal trees and razor-edged winds, a thin layer of ash powdered over the cold, packed earth.

The prison is gone.

It's nothing but a gaping hole in the ground almost a mile across and 25 feet deep. It's filled to capacity of innards covered in powdery residue, of death and destruction, hushed in the wake of catastrophe.

A gust of wind climbs into Touka's clothes then, wraps itself around the marrow of her bones. Icy fingers branch up her pant legs, clench their fists around her knees and pull; suddenly she's not aware how she's still upright. Her hands are covering her mouth and she doesn't know how they got there.

Afraid of everything out of nowhere, Touka looks back to find that Ken is watching her. His eyes are half-lidded, mouth a straight line.

The young English teacher feels as if she's been ladled from the inside, like someone has scooped out all the organs she needs to function and has left her body with nothing.

Everything. Everyone.

Gone.

Completely obliterated.

"TOUKA—"

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_**"Maybe we feel empty because we leave pieces of ourselves in everything we used to love."  
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_**r.m. drake**_


	13. the run

『Author's Note;』

7/6/16

Hey everyone! Because I haven't updated in awhile, I decided to give you guys another chapter!

Also, Happy (late) Fourth of July! I hope you all celebrated! If you didn't, that's cool too! ;^)

Thanks so much for reading! Love you! xoxo

* * *

_**one**_

Ken tackles Touka to the ground just as the sound of footsteps fills the air.

The boy's arms are under her, cradling her to his brawny and surprisingly well-built chest, his body shielding Touka's from whatever imminent danger she's just gotten them into. Her heart is beating deafeningly loud from both _fear_ and from _being so so so so so close to him._ It's hammering inside her torso so gruelingly that she's sure her ribcage has shattered into a trillion pieces.

She can hardly hear Ken's voice as he expressionlessly speaks into her neck, a screen of unpigmented, white hair brushing against her cheek.

"Are you alright?" he asks with a deadpan resonance of voice, drawing her figure tighter against him at her slight pause.

Touka exerts a curt nod.

"Stay down," he vocalizes from above her. "Don't move."

_I wasn't planning on it_, the young woman doesn't say to him.

"PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" Comes a harsh voice.

"Be careful! They might be dangerous!" Another voice.

Touka's entire body goes stiff.

_Cops? _

She hears footsteps coming closer, crunching on the ash and dirt. Ken loosens his hold around her, and she realizes the two policemen must be reaching for their guns.

"Wait—no—," Touka tries to shout, her voice muffled by the ground.

"GET UP!" One of the police force bellows, still moving closer. "Stand up!"

The mauve-haired female has officially begun to panic. And almost as a reply to her sudden alarm, Ken's chafed mouth brushes against her ear. "I'll be right back."

All Touka knows is that the ghoul's last words are caught in her veins and she can't cough out the cold or the protest hacking at the back of her throat. Just as she gathers the ability to object, to throw words of remonstrate, Ken's weight is lifted. His body gone. He's completely disappeared.

She scrambles to her feet, spinning around.

There.

He was standing about ten feet away from her, his back turned, using his frame to place a wedge between her and the two cops facing them, guns raised and pointed.

"What the hell are you doing around here? This is a crime scene," one of the law officers clamor. The other policeman glances from the wreckage, to her and Ken, and then to his partner. "You don't think..."

At that, the two cops exchange cautious glances, before one places a finger on the trigger of his firearm. "PUT YOUR HANDS UP! NOW! OR I'LL SHOOT THE BOTH OF YOU!"

Ken doesn't reply to the threat. Instead, he slowly turns to face Touka. His eyes, olivine. His hair, unruly and blindingly white. His nails, dark as night in contrast to his washed out skin. His strange, monochrome-black bodysuit, too tight in all the right places and his lips, _his cracked lips_ twitch up to flick the switch that lights the fire in the woman's heart and she doesn't even have time to blink and exhale before she's caught up in his aura.

His wintry, calm aura. The aura that seemed to caress her entire physique and whisper, _"everything's going to be okay." _All at once, her skin is hypersensitive, at _long long long last_ awake and thrumming with life, humming with feelings so intense it's almost indecent.

"I SAID PUT YOUR HANDS UP!"

"Wait! We're not—" Touka yells, forcing herself out of her thoughts.

"ENOUGH OF THIS!" Comes the voice of one of the officers. He raises his own pistol, points the barrel past Ken, at Touka, and pulls the trigger.

* * *

_**two**_

It all happened so fast.

The bubbling as the boy's kakuhou tore and released from his lower back, rinkaku pulsating a rich red fluorescence that inclined to purple and was static in its vigorous energy, its province waving in four vast streams of color in the form of terrifyingly sharp, tentacles made of red armor.

How his scleras were suddenly swallowed in jet black, pupils shifting from the usual green-grey color to pure vermilion, cardinal veins forcing themselves out from the outer-corner of each eye.

How he was suddenly right in front of her, expression slightly pinched, kagune hardening into ruby rock and becoming a wall around her without any effort involved.

It was the first time Touka had seen Ken in his ghoul-form and she thinks, heart thumping, how how how how _h_ow_ could something so dangerous be so tragically beautiful? _

The sound of bullets hitting something solid is abruptly all Touka hears and for a few long seconds it feels like she's dreaming; she counts everything. Even numbers, odd numbers, multiples of 5. She counts the ticks of the bullets, she counts snaps of the bullets, she counts the lines on an imaginary sheet of paper. She counts the stuttering pumps of her blood, she counts her pulse and her blinks and the number of attempts it takes to inspire enough oxygen for her aching lungs. Touka remains like this, stands like this, counts like this until the feeling stops. Until seeing the puddle of crushed and distorted ammunition forming around Ken's body helps shove her back to reality.

The gunfire finally stops.

Once it registers that there's no need for the protection he were putting up, Ken pulls back his kagune, releasing the pressure building up in each appendage—Touka watches in complete awe as the rinkaku becomes soft and malleable like scarlet clay at the chalky-haired male's will.

It takes every muscle in her body to pry her eyes off the sight in front of her and to focus on the police officers.

Both of their mouths are open in utter shock. The man who shot first is shaking so bad that he nearly drops his gun. "I-It's a ghoul!"

Ken takes the pause as an advantage and shoves her back with a hand. Touka stumbles at the sudden push and looks up at him, eyebrows furrowed, confused. Scared.

"Run back. I'll meet you there," He informs her, eyes intense and red pupils staring straight through her.

"What?" Breathing. Touka's so bad at breathing.

The cops must of heard what he said because now they're reloading their guns again with trembling hands. One of them stops to hold a small radio up to his mouth. "W-We need backup."

"Run!" Ken repeats, louder this time, vexed at her stillness.

1 word, 1 simple, stupid reminder of how she needs to go or else she'll be shot to death startles the butterflies sleeping in her stomach. Still, she's frozen. She can't move. She's going to die, she concludes.

The butterflies drop dead.

One of the officers raise their pistol again to shoot at Touka once more, but the movement is short-lived. Two of Ken's flexible kagune limbs whips at him and skewers through his stomach as easy as a knife cutting through soft tofu, blood exploding from the man's torso and splattering on the pavement. Ken spins around then, eyes burning, his face completely possessed by an anger so strong it were almost palpable.

He's never looked at her like that.

"GO!" He roars, police sirens becoming heard in the distance as backup approached.

Touka finds the feeling in her legs and runs.

Runs like she's never run before.

Runs despite the screams she hears behind her, runs despite knowing she were stepping on incinerated bodies, runs despite the thoughts buzzing in her head, terror's fist punching her in the gut.

She runs and runs and runs.

That is until something—no, _someone__—_grabs her with a strength so powerful and flings her towards the ground.

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_**"Who do we have here?" **_


	14. the man with the wrench

『Author's Note;』

8/13/16

Hello! Here I am bringing you another chapter of Velleitie! I've decided that I'll try to post a chapter once a month, no matter what...and maybe even post more than one chapter in the span of a month. Who knows!

For those of you wondering why this story is called "Velleitie," I'm finally here to explain!

Velleitie is a wish or powerful desire for something that nonetheless is not or cannot be followed by actions to pursue it. This is referring to Kaneki's attraction towards Touka; he wants her, yet knows he can't have her, for he fears hurting her.

Thanks so much for reading and please ignore any spelling errors or mistakes. :-) xoxo

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_**one**_

Touka's forgotten to inhale. There's people around her, shrouded in wine-red cloaks, bone-white masks concealing their faces. There were about a dozen of them, scattered around, one in every direction. She hasn't seen so many people in quite some time and she's momentarily tranquilized with awe and then panic. She should be screaming.

The grip on her arm tightens significantly and the young woman winces, spinning to face her attacker, alarms going off in her head.

Before her stood an extremely bulky man with slicked back blonde hair and sharp lizard eyes, his outfit being a pure white suit and black dress shirt; he was every bit as scary as he looked. He stared down at her with a countenance of exhilaration, mouth pulled taught in a large grin.

"Don't try and get away now. You'll only make things harder for yourself."

His voice is deep and strapping like iron and carbon, dangerously tranquil, effortlessly robust. Touka shakes her head in terror, steps back, but the man's hold on her prevents her from going any farther than arms length.

_Run!_

Ken's voice replays like a broken record in her mind and all at once the instinct _to fight, to run, to get away_ possesses her. She thrashes and screeches. Kicks with her feet and hits with her one free hand like her life depended on it.

The blonde must have been taken off-guard at her sudden action because he loosens up his clasp on her wrist. Feeling the slight gap between fingers against skin, Touka pulls herself away and digs the heel of her foot into the ground to leap into a sprint—and she almost does.

That is until the man's foot speedily collides with her back; she's shoved forward with a power so intense and so inhuman that she's thrown almost 10 feet away from her enemy, spine bombarded with a pain so intense she dives in and out of consciousness.

Her knees pop as they hit the ground head-on. After a few moments of ebony spots congregating in the edges of her vision, Touka finally tastes oxygen and a side of blood. She thinks she can hear Ken yelling but she can't tell if it's real or not because there's an acute agony tearing through her body unlike anything she's ever experienced before. She's almost sure someone is ripping her skin off and is in the middle of taking her backbone along with it.

Touka's completely immobilized.

"So you've got some fight in you." The man chuckles cavernously. Touka squints open an eye to see him striding towards her, hands in his pockets.

"Are you going to kill me?" The words escape her lips before she has a chance to reflect on them and his foot slams into her spine all over again. She coughs out a broken whimper, wheezing into the filthy dirt. Her eyes begin to tear and she's squinting again. She thinks about how the imprint of this man's shoe is carved into her back.

"Get up." He commands. Touka doesn't reply. _'I can't,_' she wants to scream. '_It hurts so bad, I can't breathe,' _she wants to cry.

Too fast and too hard his shoe kicks her in the ribs. Touka's swallowing nothing but the strangled gasps crushing her frame. "I'll tell you again; get up." Harder, faster, stronger, another kick in her gut. She can't even cry out.

The man stands above her and watches, not amused. He lets out a sigh and turns to one of who Touka thought to be his masked workers. "Get her and let's be on our way."

The cloaked individual rushes at her without hesitation and grabs her; she's suddenly lifted like she were nothing but a bag of bread and slung over their shoulder with ease. Her body is electrocuted with another flash of blinding pain when it collides with the stranger's own and this time she lets out a wail. Even still, she swallows the same ache again, finding the strength to give into the heaving sobs she can no longer repress, her self-worth dissolving in her tears, the affliction of the past five minutes wedging bitter, harrowing knobs in her joints.

As Touka's carried away to what she can safely and utterly consider her deathbed, the large man throws a look her way and grins. "Using her as bait will work quite well."

Everything goes black.

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_**two**_

Touka's head is ponderous, her eyesight is foggy, her heart is strained. There is a unmistakable flavor of dread embedded somewhere beneath her tongue and she's trying so hard to remember where it came from. The mauve-haired girl attempts to sit up and can't remember why Ken isn't next to her, offering coffee, his olivine eyes distant yet somehow warm, his expression blank.

The person she'd come to find a strange sort of happiness while in his presence.

_Ken._

Someone's palms are on her shoulders. They pull her up the rest of the way, not at all kind or tender; nails dig into her skin, and Touka has to fight the familiar sense of torment sending vines up her limbs. She tries to move her hands to push herself away but finds that they're tied together with rope; her feet are the same. She looks around only to be met with red. The blood of bodies spattered everywhere.

"How are you feeling?" The man is peering down at her.

Suddenly the woman's memories are jogged and very much alive, burning behind both eyes—Ken's face is steeped in her consciousness and she's trying to tear her hands free and is screaming for this psycho to get away from her and struggling to wriggle out of his grip but he just smiles. Laughs a little. Rips her hands down to rest in her lap.

"Still putting up a fight, eh?"

Touka tries to control the tremors that shake her body. "Get your hands away from me."

He snickers, although its more of a guttural growl.

"Ken will come here. He'll come for me." Touka gasps, eyebrows knitted together, expression terrified yet serious; although, the way she says it sounds almost as if she's trying to convince herself.

_He will, right?_

At the mention of the white-haired boy, his grin widens, the crooked smile calculated evil. "That's the plan."

"Wh—" she starts, but is cut off by him grabbing a fistful of her hair and yanking her towards him. "It doesn't mean that I can't have a little fun with you first."

* * *

_**three**_

The woman's digits begin to buckle, bones snapping in synchronicity with the wrench closing and jerking them in several directions fingers weren't supposed to go. Touka screams in agony, instinctively trying to fold into herself. The man adjusts his mask and continues on, not saying a word.

Her humanity is lying in a million pieces on this tiled floor.

Once the tool gets to her thumb she arches her back and throws her bound-feet at his chest, willing him away from her, willing his immense strength off of her small frame. She's shrieking and wrestling to see past the curtain of tears obscuring her vision; she spasms, hysterical, taken over by a blinding pain so intense she can only think of death. Her paralyzed lips send wheezing gasps throughout her lungs, and the dark waves of comatose threatens to envelop her once more.

"Don't—" She sobs, pleading with her eyes, staring into the face of this _sick,_ this _psychotic,_ _disgusting_ man. "Please don't—" Her voice breaks. "I'm begging you—"

_NO NO NO NO NO_

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**Touka can't ever breathe. **


	15. the truth she finds

『Author's Note;』

8/25/16

Here's a little update, just getting ready for the next one! This is just informing you of what's been going on.

I can't say that you'll be seeing Ken soon.

As always, ignore any mistakes and thanks so much for reading!

**P.S...** I read every single review and it really warms my heart seeing you guys so interested. Thank you! :"-)

xoxo

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_**one**_

Touka's been crying for so long that she's certain her body is made up of nothing but a congregation of her tears. The man is gone for now and she's been alone for who knows how many hours. Her clothes are glued to her skin, still wet with drying blood and slightly torn from being messed with like a rag doll. She wants to wash her fear away. She wants to drown in incomprehension. She wants to be vapid, dumb, speechless, completely void of feelings. She wants to cut away her restraints and hack off her own broken fingers.

She wants Ken. She misses him.

Misses the impassive boy who, under layers and layers of his frightful being and the terrifying truth, was surprisingly tender. Sympathetic and compassionate. A little desperate to understand her as a human, as the meal he were forced to eat since he were born. But even still, he never asked any random questions about her. He never pushed Touka to say a word about herself or her past in case it were something she wouldn't like to talk about. He never pushed her to understand him. He just made sure he was close enough to scare away anyone who'd like to hurt her.

And, truthfully, she wants to understand him.

And she sort of does. And she sort of doesn't.

Because they're not the same.

And for a second as the young woman is in a heap on this tile floor, fingers horrifically broken, still sobbing at the ebbing pain coating every section of her body, she wonders who Ken used to be. Before the world finally cracked him apart.

Tougher, taller, unyielding, resistant, sharper she knows he's become since his childhood days. He's rugged, mature, incredibly noiseless and swift. He can't afford to be soft or unhurried or relaxed. He can't afford to be anything but power, anything but aptitude and efficiency. The lines of his face are agreeable, precise, carved into shape by 20 years of hard living and conditioning and survival.

She has no right to be crying, she thinks.

Ken's been through so much more pain than this.

He didn't want to be a ghoul. He didn't want to be born the way he was. Touka knows that. In fact, she's rather aware that he didn't want to be anything for anyone but himself. He probably wanted to make his own choices and he never wanted to be a 'monster.' In all likelihood, he valued human life a lot more than humans themselves.

But...despite all that...she should've known he wouldn't come for her. Risk his life for some dense English teacher he'd known for a year.

After all, it's been two weeks since her kidnapping.

Two weeks she's been hurting. Two weeks this man has been poking and prodding at her like she was his toy. Two weeks that 'there hasn't been any sign of Ken around the entire city', Touka's heard a pair of men report to the man.

Two weeks without _him._

She's been absolutely abandoned.

Her heart ruptures. Her eyes flare. She's _so hurt_, _so furious,_ _so petrified,_ _so humiliated_, and _red-hot_ with a rage _so raw_ that it's like a conflagration dancing within her, a firestorm of crushed hopes. She wants to sock Ken in the face and crush his spine in her hand. She wants him to know what it's like to enter someone's life, pretend you care, and then leave them to the birds. Touka wants him to know the pain he's given her and she wants him to hurt. Because maybe what the CCG was trying to say all along was right.

Ghouls don't really have feelings. They only live to take from others.

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**_Touka wants to die._**


	16. the injection

『Author's Note;』

9/1/16

Yay! A new chapter!

I know a lot of you are wondering where Ken is! I'm an evil person haha.

I won't be updating all the rest of this month because, again, school (unless some miracle happens!) I know, I know. I'll try my best in October!

Thanks so much for your unwavering patience and have a great day! :-)

xoxo

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_**one**_

The man twists her arm back and the limb snaps easily. He takes on a face bordering on disgust and boredom. "You break so easily."

Touka screams and shudders and sobs until she considers destroying herself, ridding herself of this world. Her body is finally splitting under the hours upon hours of torture, the strain of holding herself together for so long. Tears are streaming fast down her face along with a torrent of saliva from her mouth and she wants nothing more than to tell him to kill her and she knows she can't. She knows he won't. She knows he's going to have fun picking her apart like a vulture and its prey until Ken comes to get her—which will be never.

She'll die here, with this grotesque man.

Touka knows she will have to keep her eyes closed. Never see again. She just can't stand to look at him for too long; she doesn't like enduring the full impression of how very inhuman he is. He is not disturbed by what he does or how he lives. In fact, he fancies it. He relishes the charge of power; he considers himself as an invulnerable entity.

Her bottom lip trembles without consent and it allows a few last cries and wheezes past the dry, bloodied barrier. She can hardly restrain the tension in her jaw as she tries to control the flood of excruciating agony. Her arm is limp and she can't move it without feeling like firecrackers are exploding and driving holes in the marrow of her bone. "P-Please...stop..."

He wipes his hands on his suit as if it were sickening to touch her and blinks, eyes sharp, narrowed to slits. "I can't do much to you because you're human and I don't want to ruin our time together. But that doesn't mean I can't do _anything_; I picked up something special for you."

His hand rustles around in his suit pocket and he has to keep himself from chuckling as Touka watches a large needle emerge from its premises. The syringe is filled with a chartreuse colored liquid, thick and toxic-looking. The man flicks the tube with a finger and the air bubbles inside the fluid expel to the top. Touka knows why he does that; it's so he won't be injecting any air into her body—but it's more for the total accuracy of the dose of whatever drug is in the syringe.

Touka's head is full of sand and smithereens of glass and fragmented dreams. She's shaking her head 'no' too slowly, blinking like a fool, incapable of locating the words in her mouth either because they're misplaced or because they never survived or solely because she has no idea what to answer. She doesn't know what she was expecting.

"Krokodil," he starts, breaking out into a sly grin, "is named for the scabby green appearance of skin once gangrene sets in. It rocketed to fame in Russia due to a heroin deficit."

"No," Touka squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. Strives to uncloud her airways, attempts to find the origin of some piercing sensation in her head. When she finally looks up she sees that he's staring at her as though completely entertained. Amused.

"The flesh on the body parts affected with Krokodil injections will rot off completely in the matter of a few days. The bone will follow shortly after. This is because the drug is five to ten times more potent than morphine. The pain is so horrific when the skin starts to decompose that people frequently need to be put in an induced coma."

Touka can hardly speak. "Why are you doing this to me?"

He ignores her and carries on. "The typical polydrug patterns of Krokodil users makes it possible that brain damage will occur from Krokodil withdrawal."

The woman tries to clear her esophagus and regrets it instantly, driving herself to blink away the disloyal tears searing at her eyes, placing transparent pearls in her eyelashes. "W-Wait a second—"

"And it's," the man snickers, "going in your arms."

Touka is breathing like she's hiked several mountains and she throws herself around, tries to get away but she _can't_, she can't because she's tied up and her fingers hurt so bad, her arm, everything hurts and she can't _run _like Ken told her to.

The man is stepping forward, the expression on his face making her want to throw up, to screech, and she would if the needle weren't already breaking the skin on the inside of one of her elbows.

It's pain like Touka's never known it, pain she never thought she could perceive, never would have even guessed. It's like grenades have gone off in the upper limb, like she's been laced with explosives from the inside out, and suddenly everything lags. The mauve-haired girl thinks that she would much rather see blood, _feel_ it ooze out of her as she blinks and blinks in a desirous endeavor to breathe. She can hear his laughing and the short frenzied gasps of her own breath and her arm feels hot, _sososososososo hot._

She's screaming.

Screaming like she's never screamed before as the man switches to her other arm.

* * *

_**two**_

A day later and radioactivity is still discharging into Touka with such energy it's completely taken over her perception. She can't sense anything but an extraordinary tropical heat engulfing her bones, her nerves, her epidermis, the cells making up her frame. So vigorous, so great, but anyhow it's desired. Her body suddenly does not feel the need to repudiate it. It does not feel the need to recoil from it, is not rummaging in its immune system for a way to shield itself from it.

This must've been how the drug was addictive.

The man is here, but he's only watching her lay in a fetal position, watching her twitch every few seconds under the drugs control. And, for the first time today, he speaks.

"Ken killed the last teacher at the prison."

A steam engine immediately hits Touka in the face as she's forced from her unexpected calm and is tossed headfirst into the frigid water of reality. She has to swallow back the taste of iron and revulsion bubbling in her mouth. Try to keep her organs from falling out. Try to stop the sudden burning in both her arms. "W-w-"

"Killed her once she found out about him. I'm surprised he hasn't pounded you to a pulp yet."

This conversation is impossible. Touka can't say anything. Her eyes are wide and disbelief cradles her in its hefty touch like a child. A part of her didn't know if it would make any difference to know that it was him. But it does.

_Ken...was the one who killed the last English teacher..._

Why.

"He was planning on killing you too."

No...

"I'm curious," he continues, "Did you think he'd save you?"

The man tilts his head at the long silence she's giving him and gazes down at her with some sort of twisted pity. Squares his shoulders."You really thought he'd come for you." A sneer sweeps the corners of his lips.

Touka doesn't want to tell him he's right.

"Well, if I am being honest, I thought he would, too. That's why I brought you here."

Stop, she wants to say. _Stop it._

"You've suppressed all your rage and resentment because you wanted to believe he'd come save you. You understand now, don't you?" The man grins widely and it takes all the strength the woman has not to tuck in on herself in fear. Her entire skeleton is like chunks of ice clinking together, paralyzing her to the core.

"No..." she hiccups, shaking her head, her hair sweeping the floor with her rigid movements. "No no no no..."

His unsettling smile only gets bigger and he laughs manically, eyes widening and nearly popping from his skull. The nightmarish barks crawl on all fours from the pit of his lungs and decimates its path as if it were hot magma. "Did he tell you that he found out the more you catapult a body onto the floor, the more malleable the meat becomes? Did he tell you how he pulled her apart like a slice of bread, how it was so easy and so soft?!"

"Stop...talking..." Touka's breath hitches. Spots cloud her vision. She's tacked into the flooring tiles by a billion gruesome images and she's cursed by a horror causing her teeth to chatter.

"He never truly cared for you! He even had the resolve to turn his back! He left you to DIE! The hilarity of it all!"

"STOP!" Touka shrieked, nearly breaking out into a fit of coughs. Her throat was raw from screaming all the time; her speech dipped with every syllable she spoke and it was embarrassing, having her pysche chipped away like that without difficulty, without her permission. She's trying to unsnarl the truth from the postulations he's force-feeding her, but inaudible sentences are too busy twisting around on her tongue. There's voices in her head and they won't stop s_top stop stop stop_—

"SHUT UP!" She screams again. This time the sudden yell and her torment are enough to send her instantaneously heaving and struggling for breath. It's in this moment she recognizes she hasn't eaten since she got here and the man only gave her a cupful of dirty water every two days. Her lack of energy and nutrition was starting to take a toll on her body, she reckoned. Every waking day it was getting laborious to move and think clearly; she constantly had a migraine and her physique trembled with each small motion. Exhaustion drew her face down considerably and when she was alone, her eyes went somewhere else; never into sleep.

Of course, it wasn't helping that her injuries continued to go untreated, whether it be her broken fingers, her newly fractured arm, or the skin around her ribs that was broken and bleeding from being hit _so_ hard _so_ much. It was only a matter of time before the skin on the inside of her elbows rotted and fell off with the bones following suit, too.

At this point, Touka also concluded that her fingers would be forever messed up. She didn't know what would happen to them if she never got medical help, for they'd been broken without any treatment for a little more over 14 days. She couldn't exactly see them since her hands were tied behind her back, but it was obvious that they were twisted in different directions, swelled and bruised to the knuckle down.

The worst part of it all wasn't the physical pain, though.

It was the emotional pain the man was putting her through.

_It hurts so much._

_It hurts so so so much, Ken._

Touka had thought that maybe Ken wasn't so bad. Maybe. She thought that maybe he wasn't as awful as everyone said ghouls were.

She thought maybe he saw something in her. A part of her really did. But she'd tried so hard to repress the alarms going off in her head, the adrenaline trying to push her away, all of it; just because she'd thought she saw something good in the white-haired boy.

What a joke.

And she starts sobbing again, the tears crashing hard and fast now. But it wasn't because of the anguish of pain or trauma anymore; it was because she screwed herself over. There was no trying to deny it. She couldn't. She couldn't lie to herself anymore.

She was in love with Ken._ Utterly and entirely and wholly in love with Ken._

Touka's not ready for this. Not yet. Not now. Not like this. But a rush of feelings, images of his hands, his hair, his chapped lips are charging through her mind and she tries but can't push the thoughts away, can't ignore the memories of the sickly sweet scent of his skin and the insane familiarity of his body when he had held her close to his chest to protect her.

Why did she have to fall in love with such a _bastard_? Why is she learning these things from her torturer instead of from _him himself?_

_Why why why why why why why why why?_

_Why did you leave me?_

"Does this information make you angry?" the man teased, breaking her thoughts.

Touka doesn't say anything. She wants to sew his smiling lips into an irreversible glower. She wants to yell for help. She wants so many things, but right now she's too broke to afford anything but the lavishness of delirium. "Go away," She's trying to mutter. Trying to breathe. Her heart is racing so fast she can hear it pounding in her ears. She's feeling hot and cold and all she can think is of _him_, how it wasn't supposed to happen like this, it wasn't all supposed to collapse and drift apart.

"He's murdered many people. It's why I want him for myself; killing almost everyone from Aogiri Tree. Almost all my followers. It's only right I put him to death for all he's done."

The mauve-haired woman has to keep herself from vomiting. She wants to say that he's right. She wants to tell the man that she understands, that she wants the same thing, but at the same time she wants Ken, too, but the moment feels so tense and pressing that Touka's half convinced she's dying. She tries to block out a sizzling, fuzzy sound in the back of her skull calling her to rest.

"It's time you stopped pretending," the gigantic man simpers, letting his features mellow and craning his neck, getting inches away from her face. He's leering at her maliciously, wicked as he speaks, an undercurrent of exigency in his tone. "You cower when you could control. You don't have to be tolerant anymore. We can both take him down. That's what you want, isn't it?"

_Yes! I want to see him beg for mercy! I want him to know how it feels to be this way! S_he thinks, voice wailing in her brain. _Can't you see that's what I want!_

"I'm willing to treat you as an equal. I'm willing to give you everything you could ever want, and above all else, I can put power in your hands. I can make them suffer for what they did to you." He leans in just enough. "I can change your world."

_Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes y**es yes yes! **_

Realization slams into Touka like 1000 pounds of levelheadedness and native wit. What was she thinking? She shouldn't be making deals with him. She shouldn't be contemplating hurting someone. She has totally lost her mind.

Her bound hands are balled behind her back now and she's convulsing everywhere, disgusted in herself. However, even through her violent quivering, even through her weeping, she convenes enough strength to spit in his face. "You—You can go to hell."

The man's eyes eclipse and his smile evaporates quickly only to be replaced with a terrifying scowl, teeth clenched. He doesn't waste any time and mercilessly grabs a fistful of the woman's hair and lifts her up by it. Gravity jerks her downward in turn and almost immediately it feels like someone has set fire to her scalp. She winces and chokes on nothing.

"YOU LITTLE—"

His colossal fist meets her face.

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_**Maybe some people do deserve to die.**_


	17. the crumbling of this room

『Author's Note;』

10/19/16

Hey you guys! Thank you (as always) for your patience! I love you all so much! Reading your reviews makes me so happy and they never fail to put a smile on my face.

Today I turned 16 and wow, I can't believe I started this fanfic when I was around 14 years old? I'm such a slow writer, haha.

Have a great day and enjoy!

xoxo

* * *

_**one**_

Did she make it that easy to walk in and out of her life?

Touka Kirishima doesn't know. Frankly, she's not sure she knows anything anymore. Her entire life was so easily turned upside down in the past 9 months. And by what? Who? She clearly remembers the first time she met Ken at that prison; the way he was so reserved, the way he sent shivers down the flat expanse of her shoulder blades to her spine with a single glance. The young woman was and had never been an observant person, but just two months into her job teaching the inmates at the facility, she found herself paying more and more attention to her students with every passing day.

Or one, at least.

Back then, she could've spent hours just watching every little thing Ken did. The way a cleft settled itself between his brows when he concentrated and how his eyes watched her with a hidden interest whenever she spoke. How he'd steeple his fingers on the table and look up through his soft, unpigmented eyelashes when he talked. Even the smallest actions had caught Touka's eye.

It was hard, not thinking about him. In truth, that was just about all she did these days.

To the best of her remembrance, the teacher recalls a moment they had together, back when they'd bunkered in that tiny, stuffy garage-looking place; the sun was setting and Touka was just finishing up her dinner consisting of one of those mini Kelloggs cereals. The girl had always thought the little cereal boxes were cheap and a waste of money considering how little product you got, but that evening she didn't feel the need to complain. She'd popped a dry fruit loop into her mouth and instead of saying something about the breakfast sustenance being stale, asked him a question.

The ivory-haired youth turned to her at that with a profile of concealed wonder. "What do I want to do with my life?" He had repeated her inquiry, eyebrow flicked and eyes watchful. At first, Touka thought he wouldn't answer. After all, Ken was a self-contained person, and his emotions and sentiments were supposed to stay a secret between he and himself alone; anything worth knowing about him was deeply and intentionally tucked away, and even then the woman knew that it was not without reason. In spite of that, to her surprise, Ken had taken on a pondering air and actually explained.

Touka would have never thought that she would meet a ghoul so considerate, so falsely unpolluted. But yet there he was that night. Sitting with his back against the wall right next to her, putting his dreams into words—like how he was 22 and wanted to go back and finish college by his 24th birthday, how he longed to know what cake really tasted like, and even how he wished of owning a house in an area with emerald grass, azure skies, and a dirt driveway.

She'd never seen such a gorgeous sight, the way he heedfully expressed himself with a diluted sort of passion, a cautious, but strong spirit.

It was right then and there that Touka knew he'd be the one to stuff butterflies in her stomach and sweep a blush across her cheeks. He didn't seem like the other men she'd met before; it was almost as if he didn't belong on Earth. He respected others opinions, he always looked at people as if they were magnificent pieces of art, he was polite, he only spoke when spoken to, and when he did speak, it was with unwavering wisdom and hints of veiled generosity and concern.

His existence had become a fight to make himself appear harmless, show that he's not a threat, that he's capable of living among other human beings without hurting them, and through his efforts, he did seem normal. However, there was one thing about him that wasn't ordinary to Touka; the sound of his voice. Whenever he said her name, she could almost catch the shrouded tenderness in each syllable as it rolled off his tongue and grasp it in her palm, the flow really smooth and mellifluous, rich and honeyed. It had the capability to make her knees give out, and it also had the power to make her feel safe. His voice was…home.

Ken seemed to be too pure for this world.

And Touka, whether she knew it or not, was the reason why. She took out the inner peace that he buried years ago from all the malice, violence, hostility, betrayal, and so much more that he'd felt or dealt with. She looked past the 'ugliness' and 'horror' that society branded him with. She found the vulnerable part of him, the soul he had to kill in order to survive.

She found the real him.

Part of her wishes she could see him right now; she wants to make sure he's okay, that he's recovering well and eating enough and getting sleep at night. But another part of her is afraid to see him. Because seeing Ken means saying farewell for good. It means really recognizing that she can't be with him anymore and knowing that he wasn't a nontoxic person.

Afterward, when Touka was lying on that filthy, stray mattress staring up at the ceiling, clutching her scratchy blanket to her chin, Ken told her something she'd never forget. "Someday you'll be in the hands of someone else, someone who will love you and make sure you are at your best every day," he had remarked, voice deadpan, face blank with that signature Ken look. "I hope they'll know how to treat you well. You deserve it."

There had been another time when it was the dead of night and Touka was wide awake, yet exhausted enough that she bore the ability to ignore the metal coils of the worn-down mattress digging into her skin. Ken had just slipped into the room and locked the heavy metal door behind him when she'd shot straight up, ready to defend herself against whatever lurked in the darkness, grasping the gray sheet that laid over her lap. He'd paused in his steps once he noticed she was awake, blinking up at him through narrowed eyes.

"Ken?" She'd asked.

"It's me."

The white-haired boy had settled down by her side, as usual, and Touka could make out the outline of his physique through the murkiness, his eyes locked onto the wall in front of him. It was quiet like that for around a minute, but it wasn't an awkward sort of silence; it was a comfortable hush, one only shared between two restful individuals with no worries in the world.

Once the quietude had reached a full three minutes, the woman shifted on her side to face Ken completely, to drown herself in the familiarity of his features. The shuffling caught his undivided attention. His head slowly swiveled to the side and then they were both looking at each other. Touka swallowed, placing one hand under her stuffy pillow and the other next to her chest.

"You're so...closed off."

"Mm."

"Why?" Her voice had been a failed attempt at flatness, an apprehensive try at apathy.

"You ask a lot of questions."

She'd closed her mouth after that, rolling onto her back to stare up at the ceiling. Several more minutes of tranquility promenaded by and then suddenly she was shivering at the hands of a cool draft pouring in through multiple cracks in the concrete walls. Her eyes flicked towards Ken, half expecting some sort of reaction too, but Touka distinctly remembers his body; it was unflinching in the night, his silhouette a stable model against a backdrop of black. She had no idea what to say. There was nothing to say.

Touka had gone back to gawking at the ceiling.

"Being nobody is just my point of existence, and mine alone. However, people who aren't me still have reasons for not dishing out every single fact about them."

Her gaze snapped to him again. His head was sloped towards the right, both olivine eyes focused and unclouded despite the shroud that hid them. He spoke.

"They build walls around themselves because they don't want their broken pieces to hurt anyone." A pause. "You don't have to understand."

She'd watched his careful movements, the slim attempt he made to look unbothered by her reaction, almost calm. But at that time, Touka had seen just how pre-planned it was. How there had been a reason behind every movement, every readjustment of his body. He was always keeping his ear open, always planting an unshakable hand to the ground, peering at the door every few breaths, memorizing its outline, the rusty hinges, the paint being skinned by old age and falling off in curly chips. She'd picked up the way he'd gone taut—by the narrowest of margins noticeable—at the sound of small creaks, the abrasion of corroding metal, the wind barreling outside. It was obvious he's always been attentive, always on edge, ready to exchange blows, to fight. It made her want to ask him if he'd ever known peace. Protection. If he'd ever been able to sleep through the night without waking up once. If he'd ever been able to inhale and exhale without constantly having to glance over his own shoulder.

Breathing space is served and then splintered into smithereens by Touka's slingshot of words. "...Do you think I just feel too much?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

Ken must've detected the gloom in her tone because he'd cut in. "That's not a bad thing."

Touka's voice had been uncharacteristically small then. "How?

"It's a curse to feel so deeply, but it's also a gift. To live otherwise wouldn't feel like living at all."

If someone would've given her a notebook or a pen right that second, she could have written down a hundred times a day about how much that hit a nerve and made her throat tight, how he wasn't her first lover but how she wanted him to be her last, how she missed him, how she missed their strange, comforting friendship.

Friendship?

But it wouldn't make sense. No, so she'd rather suffer alone in her mind.

Still, it's not exactly the memories that plague her. It's the visions of what could've been. She keeps picturing herself sailing towards his arms and crashing against his chest. They would be happy and read books and at night be cozy in bed together with the windows open and the wind soft.

Thinking about him was like Touka had nothing better to do than continue holding on. She thought she'd move on a little faster than this. It isn't until now, nearly a month later, that she realizes hating Ken would be much harder than people made it out to be. How easy it would be to just vice on this stupid world around her. Vacuum up a person's individual energy and will to live and leave them dead in an alley just because someone tells her she should.

That was the CCG.

So many people from so many places had joined together to murder ghouls and rid them of the world, just because someone pointed a finger and said "Those are the bad guys. Those men over there." Kill, they chant. Kill because you trust us, kill because we're human like you. Kill because you're supporting the right team. Kill because they're wicked, and we're heroes. Kill because we order you to. Because some people are so untaught that they truly think there are solid neon threads dividing the good and the wicked. That it's simple to fabricate that kind of analysis and go to sleep at night with a guiltless conscience. Because it's okay.

It's okay to kill a man if someone else with more power considers him unfit to live.

Ken wasn't the only one who had problems; the world was messed up. Because there are times when the anger drains until it's nothing but a deep puddle resting in the pit of Touka's stomach and she sees the world and marvels about its people and what it's becoming and she thinks about hope, likelihood, and capability. She thinks about what will happen if no one fights back. She thinks about a world where no one stands firmly against injustice.

This way of living was truly awful.

Touka can't help but wonder if Ken ruminates about her too. She wonders if he regrets leaving her. She wonders what he's thinking and she wonders if he even considered her a friend before all this. When her resentment didn't exist and her scars were only physical.

Now the time they spent together meant nothing. Nothing mattered anymore. Not the small thoughts they shared, not the way she smiled at him and he returned the friendly gesture with the ends of his lips vaguely turning upwards. Not even when he revealed his true self to her and she began to accept him. And at that time, she had finally known about him better, became aware of all his rough edges and his perfect curves.

Ultimately, he influenced her in forms she never noticed until now; the way she spoke too quietly to really be heard, but just loud enough so that she couldn't be disregarded. How she floundered at the slightest sound, as if anyone else's presence might cleave the efficacy from her own.

It wasn't important anymore, though. The good memories had been long washed away with Touka's tears and there was nothing left for her to grasp and hold onto; she was walking a tightrope of hope with a blindfold and it was fraying away under her feet.

Even through her torment, her brain comes up with different things to focus on, like how lots of people continuously claim that pain has the ability to shape someone. It had been depicted many times in the books Touka read, told many times to her by her professors, even the personnel at the prison. And maybe it does for some people, but Touka wasn't malleable and she wasn't a piece of clay.

The pain didn't change her. It didn't make her feel like a stronger person, and it didn't make her cold. It just hurt.

The saddest part was that Touka knew she was dying. In fact, she was utterly and totally aware of it—moving was a chore and breathing hurt. It was exceptionally hard to keep her eyes open and her entire body ached but remained numb at the same time. She knew she was going to die soon; whether it'd be right now, tomorrow, or the day after. There was only so much the human body could take and hers was well over its limit. The woman was actually surprised she had managed to survive this long.

It's funny how life is teasing her. _It knows_ and _she knows_ that her time is almost up, and she was learning to be okay with that. But she guesses life has a funny sense of humor, for giving her these feelings. How can she be completely okay with dying, when she wanted to live? How can she sit back and let death run its course when she needs to live for herself? Life sure is amusing, and it knows exactly how to make this last run really tear Touka apart. It's simple; you can run and you can hide and you can try to pretend you weren't even alive to begin with and it'll still find you. Death will show up wearing a cloak of coal and it will wave a staff and drag you away when you least expect it. It will delete every trace of your existence on this earth and it will do all this work for no pay. It will ask for nothing in return except for your soul. It will curtsy at your funeral and accept the praises for a job done well and then it will vanish forever.

Her end was to come soon.

Today, she doesn't feel the need to shift from her uncomfortable position on the floor and licks her lips. They were parched, the skin peeling and hanging off in thin, white slivers that she began to nibble off. The taste of iron greeted her with open arms and honestly? She didn't care. This was what she did when the man was gone and she was granted a moment to think to herself. What time was it? Sometimes it felt like she was lying here for hours, biting her lips until they were tender and sore. There were no windows in the humungous, dark room, so there was no way of possibly knowing. It could be raining, it could be bright out. It could've been day and it could've been the night. Touka wasn't given the opportunity to know.

Thoughts constantly buzzed through her head and kept her company until her eyes closed and she drifted into a light slumber. However, the dozing wasn't by any means an escape from reality; when she slept, she had nightmares and woke from them, ten times more exhausted than she was before she fell asleep in the first place. She needed the kind of rest and peace sleep didn't offer. It was all so tiring.

Touka didn't want to fight anymore. She didn't want to live anymore.

No. She wasn't living. She was waiting to die.

There was no point, after all. All the friends she had made at the prison were gone. She had been getting to know the people, started learning how to build new friendships, to feel comfortable. She had no more family. And Ken—

What bothers her is that she doesn't know if someone is missing her right now. Everyone she had ever cared about either passed away or left her; the idea locks the door to the exit of her mind and makes camp in her core. It's a conclusion that will not leave and the bitter thought kicks a lump straight into her throat. Touka has to swallow it down dryly and allow her cheek to press against the chilly tiled floor. The frosty temperature counteracts with the heat from her face and it actually feels nice. It was weird experiencing something so foreign to her now; something feeling good, a pleasant inkling securing itself into her veins. For the first time in what felt like years, she's a little content and allows some new notions to cloud in her brain.

Now that she thought about it, she wasn't even supposed to be in love with Ken. Hell, she wasn't even supposed to have any sort of friendship with him. She secretly wishes she never knew him. They were just supposed to be acquaintances. But somehow, in some way, Touka had managed to fall for the boy. How stupid she was. God.

And the girl realizes this is probably what she's meant to do. Maybe this is exactly why she's here. Maybe she's just supposed to die.

She takes a breath.

In and out, every single day in every hour minute and moment, you know you must inhale whether you like it or not. Even as you plan to asphyxiate your hopes and dreams you breathe. Even as you wither away and sell your dignity to the man on a corner of the street, you breathe. You breathe when you're wrong, you breathe when you're right, you breathe even as you slip off the ledge toward an early grave. It cannot be undone.

So she breathes and breathes and breathes and breathes and breathes.

Breathes until her eyes close, breathes until they're successfully sewn shut with a thread of fatigue and a thin needle of slumber.

* * *

**_two_**

Touka's whisked from her light sleep by a large booming noise and the ground trembling beneath her frame. Alarm seizes her by the neck.

At first, she doesn't know what's going on. The exclusive things her mind can concentrate on is the subsiding inflammation of her face and the throbbing of her muscles when she tenses.

It's only until a hefty crack reaches her ears and pops them does she come to her senses.

One of the walls of the torture room is clefting into a hundred pieces. She watches, horrified, as one enormous, jagged chunk shivers just before disuniting from the concrete and bursting into a cloud of rubble. The earth chasms under the cutthroat pressure and the reverberations gush through Touka's inner being, hitting and then rebounding off her marrow until her skull is splitting in half and her stomach is a pendulum ramming into the slender curved bones of her ribs. Her eyesight dwindles in and out of focus and she has to blink a billion times to clear it.

Why is the man doing this? He left hours before, saying he had some business to attend to... Maybe something went sour. Maybe he had a good reason for this...

No. He wouldn't destroy his own hideout. He wouldn't.

It hits her right in the face. Punches her right in the stomach. Awareness pounces on the mauve-haired woman's back and detonates in her skin and rakes its fingernails down her waist and she's gagging on impossibility.

_Oh, God. _

It's hard to see at first, but then it's obvious; it's the form of a person. They were probably around 5'8", their shadowed body thin but seemingly muscular all the same—it's easy to make out almost every detail through the gray mist. And then, all at once, the figure steps through the fog of debris, his hair a milky white mess around his head and seemingly longer than when she last saw him, his eyes so grey-green and so simultaneously lucid that they challenged precise description. His kagune swings in four sanguine tentacles behind him, slashing at the air and then falling still. And his skin, _his skin_appears sickeningly pale, more so than usual, and it perversely brings out a patch of ruby blood that is splattered against one of his cheeks. Dark violet bags hang under his eyes and to Touka, he looks completely and utterly disoriented. She doesn't think he's rested for weeks on end and wants so desperately to know what's been happening in his life but she does not want to ask. Does not want to care.

The woman's head is pulsating and the stitches in her heart begin to pop out.

She can't make the world cease its rotating and her uncertainty is gushing into blameworthiness which immediately develops into fresh hatred and then her rage is completely boiling to the surface when she looks at him. She knows she is being hauled by a current she can't seem to get rid of, and so bad is she trying to dodge the eye of the hurricane. The scariest thing isn't when they look into each other's eyes and realize everything has changed, but understanding that it is still all about them in the end.

Touka tries to clench her hands into fists but her injured fingers don't let her.

He's conclusively stiffened in place, staring straight into her soul, his Rinkaku paused midmovement until it falls limp at his sides, jaw slack; stunned, temporarily stupefied. His eyes, those _beautiful, beautiful orbs_ are focused on her, wide and terrified, eyebrows pinched together in exasperation and confusion, and something that looks like fierce regret. The corners of his mouth are pulled down and he looks _so_ broken and battered at what he sees.

Touka. One of her eyes is enveloped by a purplish bruise with a sickly green bordering its edge, her actual sclera swarmed with rosy, healing splotches occurring as a result from ruptured blood vessels. Her arms are scaly and some of the flakes coating them were falling off revealing raw, pink flesh underneath; not to mention that one of the appendages was bent the wrong way, puffy and still fighting off a harsh, discolorated lump. And her fingers, _oh god_, her fingers—they were twisted in different directions, hideously broken, contusions and lesions settling themselves upon her knuckles.

So many random bruises, all in different stages of healing, cloaked her entire body, head to toe. Everywhere.

100,000 expressions pass over Ken's face in the matter of five consecutive seconds.

"Don't look at me."

Touka can barely say the words because she's so weak. Her tears tumble backward, stinging as they scorch their way down her throat. Everything goes hot and cold and something is awakened inside of her and her hands, tied behind her back, instinctively reach out for him, looking for something to hold on to and it takes everything she has to let them drop. Her eyes are neglecting to stay open and she's only just conscious enough to whisper his name. She's drifting in a veil of a total, severe hatred for this boy and all that he's done and she wants to stay lying on this filthy floor and giggle until the tears gag her into a satisfied stillness. Was it better to remain crushed or to be glued unevenly back together?

"Touka," Ken breathes, taking a feeble step towards her, nearly stumbling as if his legs couldn't bear to hold himself up anymore. "What did he_ do_ to you?"

"Stay away from me," the dark-haired woman croaks and she's shaking all the while trying to ram the tears back but she's withdrawing into oblivion because she's assuming that this must be her punishment. She earned this harrowing pain. "Go away..."

"Touka, we need to leave right now," Ken vocalizes urgently, coming closer. His Rinkaku stays hovering behind him, ready to jump into action if needed. For once, he seems like he doesn't know what to do. "I'm going to get you out of here."

All Touka knows is that she does not want to be alone with Ken. She's hyperventilating like she's been inhaling a poisonous, undiluted form of oxygen and she's trying so hard but she doesn't know how to keep her body from reacting to him, to his words, to the heart-wrenching ache in his voice. It's in this moment that Touka wants to laugh one of those peculiar, delusional laughs that indicates the end of someone's sanity, because this world, she thinks, is against her. Ruining all of her decisions by making every option so tough.

"I said stay away from me." Her voice cracks from the pressure of talking again and she wheezes. Even through her anger, _it_ keeps hitting her in the face, in the cranium, in the backbone, this _awareness_ of just how much she cares about him, whether she liked it or not. Being close to him like this is a painful reminder of everything she had to force herself to forget. "I'm begging you...just leave me alone.."

It's tough to break a habit when it's staring right at you.

"I'm going to cut off the bonds. I'm not going to hurt you."

"_Get away_."

"Stop. I'm not leaving you like this."

"Yes."

"Just cooperate with me—"

"You've already abandoned me once," she snaps at him poorly. Her face feels like fractured china glass. "I'm sure you won't have a problem doing it again."

He's breathing hard. Too wild. He hastily reaches for her restraints to undo them."Touka—"

And then she's crying and Ken wrenches his hands away like he's burned her, remains utterly silent in shock. He doesn't say a single thing as she hurls wretched, disgusting insults at him and accuses him of being too cold-hearted to come get her weeks before. Calls him a monster, pointless, an awful waste of space. He doesn't flinch at the abusive remarks, neither does he appear particulary stung by the venom in her tone. There's a small amount of shock gracing his features though, and it's obvious that he's never seen Touka so bitter or cruel, let alone cry before. He wants her to stop. Maybe erase the things she's just said.

But Touka doesn't. She continues with derogatory strings of sentences and only stops for a moment once a sharp pain envelops her vocal cords.

The chalky-haired boy is still now, face contorted into one full of something Touka doesn't understand. He takes the sudden pause as a chance to speak. "Please. Let me help you. We need to go_._"

"You're an evil, inferior creature who takes what he wants when he wants." She starts again, hissing between her teeth and ignoring the burning sensation throwing a cloak over the entirety of her throat; she has to hold back a coughing fit from the effort. "You don't mean anything to anyone. Not even me."

Ken doesn't say anything. Nothing at all.

"I'm sorry you have such a miserable, worthless life and I'm sorry no one ever took a chance to be your friend. I'm sorry for all the disastrous choices you've made that you have to live with. I'm sorry that you feel confined by them, that you think of yourself as a freak who can't be changed. But most of all," she murmurs, sputtering words that were almost incomprehensible due to over exertion. "Most of all...I'm sorry that you're such a goddamn disappointment who left me to die!"

The quietness between them has massacred a million unimpeachable seconds and when he finally speaks, his voice is barely audible, dressed with disbelief, laced with affliction.

"I've been looking for you all this time."

Touka's breath hitches and wavers. He's..._what?_

His gaze is too heavy, his countenance, too deep. His expression is too full of something she doesn't want to recognize. He's looking at her like she succeeded, like she shot him straight in the head twenty-four times and left him for dead, like she stomped on his dreams and stole a viable part of him.

And Touka sees the difference in him now. She sees what's changed.

He's not trying to hide his emotions from her.

She can't stomach the look in his eyes at that, the sorrowful, awful hurt he's making no effort to conceal. She's not used to seeing sentiments play on his face and she doesn't like it. Not at all. She wants him to go back to his blank countenance, she wants him to stop looking at her like his skull has been picked free of a brain and he can't process any sort of information.

"I couldn't find this hideout. It's hours away from where we originally were," Ken pronounces bitterly. "I never intended on leaving you."

The woman vows to never open her mouth again. Shame is pooling in every inch of her form, radiation has oxidized its way up into her center, charring her from the inside out. She's so repelled, so terrified to hear the sincerity in his words.

"I tried so hard. Every day I searched every part of the city, but there were no traces of you. I couldn't sleep at all. I could only think about where you were, what'd happened to you." A dense breath. "Yamori sent men after me. I had to keep them off my back, all the while attempting to find out your location. I had to be careful because if I were to die, I wouldn't be able to save you. I'm..."

He swallows and his jaw clenches, the inferior attempt at keeping himself from feeling culpable failing miserably.

"I'm aware that this is all my fault."

Touka doesn't know what to say to make this right. She doesn't know how to take her words back, and she's not sure if she can. Do you ever just realize you made a horrible error? A slip of the tongue? Realize that maybe you shouldn't have even woken up at all? Yeah. Touka hopes she goes back to sleep. Forever. And yet, a part of the young woman is urging her not to listen to his words; people always lie to save themselves. Because something inside of her heart is ripping apart and it feels like fear, it tastes like panic and anxiety and desperation and she doesn't know how to understand the image in front of her. She doesn't want to see Ken like this, caring and trying to help her. She doesn't want to think of him as anything other than a monster.

She can't move.

Touka's stuck between him and the wall and she has nowhere to go and she wouldn't want to go even if she could. She doesn't want to have to fight this even though there's something inside of her shouting that it's criminal to be so selfish, to allow him to be with her if it'll only end up hurting him; or, in the long run, getting him killed. But he's gaping at her, gaping at her like she's demolishing him and the woman figures out that she's hurting him more by trying to stay away.

All in all, this has to be done.

It wasn't important if another portion of her wanted him to take her away from this hellhole and wrap his arms around her and wipe away her tears. It wasn't important if she wanted morning and noon and nightfall with him. She wanted his smiles, his kisses…the smell of his hair, the taste of his skin, the touch of his breath on her cheek. No. She couldn't have it. She wouldn't allow it.

_Please, no._

Yes, the moments Touka desired most are the moments she could never have with Ken, and he was entitled to so much more than her, than this tortured person with so little to contribute. Regardless, she'd rather lay here and allow his arms to shelter her than say a single word. Because she's vulnerable, she's so vulnerable and she wants him so much it's destroying her. She can't stop rocking, she can't see accurately through the drapery of salty tears obscuring her vision, she can't do anything.

And he won't stop trying to undo her restraints no matter how many times she cries "no." He keeps whispering "stop, stay still" and Touka officially wants to die.

But the young woman thinks that if she stays here any longer she will actually go insane. Touka can't help but reflect about how Ken always tried to keep her from harm, how he probably nearly lost his life in the process. Even throughout her sarcastic remarks or her sudden blemished attitude back then, Ken continuously thought too highly of her, placed Touka on a pedestal that she knew she never deserved. He was always defending her, always watching out for her, never discerning that it was her, it was always her who was the biggest threat. The most ominous, because she was the one at fault for putting him in danger. These wretched people used her as bait and they wanted Ken, wanted him to die, and she did then, too. She wasn't any better than them at this point. So she has to snip herself out of his world. Snip him out of her own.

She tries to focus all her energy on where she is, on what she's doing and what she is planning to do. Tries to imagine cotton plugging her ears, to not let herself hear him, to not let herself think of him, to not wonder about what he's thinking or how he's holding up or what he must be feeling right now. She begs herself not to dwell on these last moments with him, the way he's brushing the pads of his fingertips against the rope tied around her wrists, how he's trying to get her to listen, his lips and his hands and his breaths coming in too slow out of _agitation_ and _bafflement_—

These are the times in her life that Touka looks back on and wishes that she had been a little brighter or been a little more critical of her surroundings. Times she wishes she hadn't accepted so easily as things being what they were, despite her own personal judgment. There were so many things that went against her better reason, so why'd she let him slip by so easily?

Ken's still attempting to unbound her restraints and it's not working because Touka is twisting around and he doesn't want to risk hurting her any further.

"Stop moving. Touka, I need you to calm down."

"NO!"

"Stop it—you have to stop—"

"Don't t-touch me!"

He looks up, looks at her like he can really see her, see _into_ her, like he wants the 21 year old girl to see into him too and then he drops his fixed look. Touka squints past the unconsciousness threatening to take her away and she surveys the harsh movement in his throat. The sluggish speed of the rise and fall of his chest. The tense line of his lips and the way he's looking like he needs to say something important. She studies his face in a way she's never dared to before and realizes she doesn't have the faintest idea what it must be like to live his life. He told her once that she didn't have a clue, that she couldn't possibly comprehend the barbaric regulations of his system of living, and Touka's only just beginning to see how right he was. Because she doesn't know anything about that kind of bloody, accursed existence.

He speaks, manages to successfully upkeep his calm tone, the one that massaged the distress and burdening troubles out of Touka's muscles. "I thought about it all the time. What it would be like to die. Because I never really knew, I couldn't tell the difference, and I was never completely positive whether or not I was truly alive. So I sat alone. I sat alone every single day."

Touka stares at him, stares at his profile that is now blank, so stunned she's forgotten how to speak. She's become a mold for liquid silver; thick, sweltering fervor circulates itself throughout her veins and the excess laminates her hands, forging her fists with an electric power so astonishing, an energy so potent she thinks it might engulf her entirely. She's light in the head from the charge of it.

"But when I met you," Ken continues, his eyes blazing bright with anger and desperation and euphonious timbres, voice like steel, his jaw unmistakably set. He's looking at all of her. His eyes are scanning her body as if to confirm she's still whole, arms and legs and everything in between. "I felt like I finally had a reason to live. I felt alive. So please. Please come back with me, Touka."

She needs to vomit. It's a terrible moment, she's situated _so __still so still so still_ because she doesn't want him to see her cry again and she doesn't want to be crying in the first place but her lips won't stop quaking and her eyes are filled to the brim with _please_ and _I didn't mean it_ and _please_ _please please _and _I'm so so sorry_ and _no no no no_ and _I'm weak, please_ _have mercy on me _and _I don't want you to die_ and Touka thought that maybe this time it would be different but it's always the same. There's no one to run to for support.

She lies on this floor with her forehead against the tile and she's trying to figure out what else could possibly go wrong. She's wondering how many more mistakes she'll have to make before things finally fall into place.

And it's much harder. So much more back-breaking to stand down and resign herself to a short lifestyle of ice and vacuity now that she's experienced warmth, kindliness, ardor, charity, and passion firsthand; the phenomenal solace of meaning something to another being.

_"It's a curse to feel things so deeply, but it's also a gift. To live otherwise wouldn't feel like living at all."_

She can't do this anymore. She can't resent Ken. And no matter how much she wants to look at him and come face-to-face with a repulsive brute constructed with the bricks of death and devastation, she doesn't.

But she does see coats of him, shades of silver and the faint aroma of white orchids and a person who's never been given a chance to be human and Touka is starting to grow scared because she feels like she's being just as diabolical as her own tormentor if she decides that this current society is okay, that some people are too far gone to be tamed and changed, that people who are different from the norm deserve to die without say, that there are actual individuals in this world who don't deserve a second chance when they mess up and she can't, she can't she can't, she can't, she can't hate him.

She just _can't._

Because Touka understands.

She understands that it's awfully tough to distinguish beauty in this earth when all you've ever known is panic and dread and despair and self-hate.

So, with every ounce of strength she has left, her mouth opens, and she whispers.

"Okay."

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**_Ken pulls a breath and disentangles her bonds._**


	18. the rotting

『Author's Note;』

5/7/17

Hello! I'm really sorry I haven't updated in the longest time. I had to get situated with the second semester and take end of the year exams.

This chapter is going to be a little short because I didn't have very long to type it up—and for that + the long hiatus, I wholeheartedly apologize. I know a lot of you like longer chapters so I'll try to take a couple days to write the next one.

Also, I've noticed that a bunch of people are starting to read the story from the beginning (hello!)

Since then, they have been spamming my inbox with questions about the few first chapters. Please keep in mind that I started writing this when I was 14; so if things seem OOC, words are spelled wrong, and some things might not make sense, it's for that reason. I am still trying to develop as a writer and hopefully as I grow, my writing will too and I will learn to write better, more consistent scenes.

Thank you so much for reading! :-)

xoxo

* * *

_**one**_

Ken is lifting her up into his arms and his kagune is suddenly gone in a hot wave of red.

Her back hurts, Touka thinks. Something has to be wrong with her back. The pain is so excruciating that she can't help but wonder if all its disks have ruptured. She's dizzy and she feels lead-footed; every single inch of her body is draped in shocks of agonizing discomfort and there's a horrifically loud ringing in both ears.

_Stay awake. _

She's clinging to the last of her dwindling energy with hysterical anguish, a croaking sound erupting from the very base of her throat as Ken shifts her in his grasp to better accommodate his hold on her. The severely chapped skin of her arms is brushing against his torso at every movement and she wants to scream, so desperately, but physically can't, because she's on Death's doorstep and his skeletal fingers are wrapped tightly around her neck in punishment for trespassing.

Ken immediately seems to realize this.

He slowly cradles the back of her head in the crook of his elbow and tucks her close to his chest, allows her sweat-drenched forehead to fall against him for support, tries with all he can to keep himself from touching any broken part of her as it would inevitably add to her suffering. Touka can't help but make another noise, ten times more guttural and higher in pitch, and she suddenly can't imagine what she must look like right now.

This pain is never ending.

Ken clambers to his feet—too fast, at full tilt—and suddenly Touka's completely lightheaded, frantically searching for consciousness to grasp onto. But everything is slipping past the gaps of her fingers and TNT is busy going off in her skull, stunning her momentarily with each blast.

It takes a few more seconds of readjustment before the ghoul begins walking, rubble and rocks cracking underneath every footfall. He steps over concrete slabs and climbs up an immense pile of boulders that lead to the huge hole in the wall he'd made earlier, jagged and uneven. As he ascends the wreckage and makes it just to the edge of the gap, Touka manages to open her eyes to slits; she can faintly make out the features of night, a backdrop of navy blue blotted with thousands and thousands of golden stars.

It's felt like forever since she's seen the sky.

Ken continues to easily make his way down the mass of serrated stones, hopping from one to the other, and finally, his feet touch solid ground.

Dirt. Grass. A warm, humid gust of the wind shaking the leaves of every surrounding tree, the musty smell of an incoming storm.

They're outside. Not in the building. _Actually outside._

Touka's free.

She's free and she almost can't believe it, because this can't be real. It was too easy. There was no way.

Touka moves her head to the side and blinks up at Ken, his form blurring at the edges.

The white-haired boy's expression is scarily blank, the cold line of his mouth stiff, both eyes avoiding her own and seemingly focused on something in front of them. A small word passes his lips, possibly an apology, or maybe something else, but Touka doesn't know for sure because she can't make out the phrase. She's slipping in and out of consciousness, a wave of static crashing over her and then lifting for a few moments before repeating the process, harder than before. Each time it sends her into a spiral of darkness that fills her senses entirely; she feels like she's drowning in a murky black lake, just breaking the water's surface only to be pulled back under by her ankles.

The woman doesn't know how long this goes on for before she hears it.

A voice, robust and heavy, like metal scratching against metal.

"You've made it."

* * *

**_two_**

20 feet away, there the man stood, a statue against a mellow backdrop of glaucous midnight; his hands were stuffed deep in his white suit's pockets, slicked back blonde hair and a hazardously sharp smirk pasted on his face.

A flash of fury. In and out. Ken's eyes glimmer and dim, so quickly that Touka can hardly notice it in her haze. He looks to the sky, avoiding any sort of contact with the man, silent a moment. "Yamori." His voice is indistinct, scarily controlled.

There's so much tension, so many unvoiced animosities blazing between Ken and Yamori, so much that Touka can physically feel the flames in the marrow of her bones. So many thoughts about today and tomorrow and the many years they've known of each others' presence. So much that they are just waiting for what will happen next and what will eventually be the end to this satirical terror.

And it hurts Touka. Just looking up at Ken from the bed of his arms, being so close and being so far away from him all at once, not being able to understand his thoughts or feelings—it's physically painful.

Yamori's guttural laugh splinters the air. His lips are curling up at the edges with every word. "You remember me."

Ken's expression changes dangerously fast. He looks as if he's remembering something so horrid that it's causing his jaw muscles to jump in vexation; a hint at his own deep sorrow. "Yes."

"I expected nothing less."

Ken seems unmoved. "I do not wish to fight." A swallow. "It is too unchallenging being monsters. Let us try to be human for once."

Disgust writes itself on the other robust ghoul's face, displayed by the grimace of his lips. "Don't make me laugh."

"You want to kill me, I presume."

"Unless you wish to join Aogiri Tree."

"I would rather die now than spend an everlasting decade on my knees."

Yamori smirks sadistically. "Do you know why I've chosen you?" He asks, not waiting for an answer before continuing, "Hunting a man is nothing notable. They are sedated and predictable. They can be found always where their phantasies lead them. Humankind is nothing significant. Every single thing they do is unprecedented." The corners of his mouth crimp further up his face. "A ghoul, however..."

Ken appears nonchalant.

Yamori's smile fades and is replaced by a look of wicked pity. The man spits. "You have lost your mind," he chuckles and shakes his head, "over a stupid human who's too weak to defend herself. She," he says, throwing a harsh look in Touka's direction, "is the silly little creature you're risking your life for."

There is clear, downright hatred suddenly raging on Ken's visage at Yamori's every word, and Touka is so unprepared by the inconceivability of it—so taken aback—that she doesn't know how to properly react. His face is pinched in a way she hasn't ever seen before, eyebrows reeled inwards and mouth drawn in tight; almost, but not entirely, of his cool exterior gone. Touka can't fathom what would make him this angry—what Yamori could've done to make Ken loathe him in such an unadulterated way.

The reality of his emotions is too strong.

"Shut up," the white-haired boy utters. His fury and grief are walking hand in hand now.

The man grins and takes a few menacing steps toward them. Ken doesn't move an inch, only pressing Touka closer to his chest instead.

Yamori stills at that, obviously repulsed by the little show, portrayed by the slight twitch of his mouth. He casually shoves his hands deeper in his pockets and spins on a heel so they're facing his back, staring into the distance just as someone who found disinterest with their current circumstances would. "Humor me. Why are you so upset?"

Ken looks to be shocked at the question, looks like Yamori had just stolen the last pieces of his restraint by saying something so remarkably apparent. His lips press into an even thinner line. He doesn't look like he wants to answer.

"Do you hate me?"

Ken's expression clouds over, rots, all of a sudden. He stares straight at the back of Yamori's head. "Don't do that," he says. "Don't ask me questions you already know the answers to. Don't torture me."

This is the reaction Yamori wanted, Touka knows, by the ever-growing sneer on the older ghoul's face.

He hungers to see Ken break. Lose his composure.

And it appears like his wish is going to come true.

"You're weak," Yamori says.

"No," Ken counters immediately. "I'm strong." His voice guttural and laced with utter incense. Touka almost thinks that he's going to attack the man right then and there. "I will always surpass you."

Yamori adopts an expression of false offense, throws a mocking look over his shoulder. "After all I've done for you." His eyes reduce to slits. "I did you a favor."

That's all it takes.

"You," Ken hisses, "You did nothing for me."

Touka has never heard Ken raise his voice like this before. By no means is it like yelling, but never has the girl heard his voice ascend above a soft murmur. Never seen him so upset. Her heart feels weighed down by the depth of the boy's psychological agony; she wishes so much that she could do something to help. To calm him. She would do anything in the world to kill this man with nothing but her bare hands.

"Why would a young child feel motivated to change if the whole world was gambling against them?" Yamori faces them completely again, eyes crinkled in some sort of corrupt amusement. "They don't. That's why I intervened." A grin. "I saw the difference. It was as if the enemy and you had become a single person. Tell me; did you feel a strange sense of unity? I did. I felt the thrill of watching the light leave your eyes."

"I felt nothing."

"You felt something. Am I correct?" An ever-growing smirk.

Ken stays hushed for a moment and Touka is almost scared to hear what might come out of his mouth. "You're wrong."

A doubtful scowl quickly replaces Yamori's smile. "What I did kept you alive. It made you learn how to be uncharitable and egocentric. You learned to be violent and combative for your own inquisitiveness at any cost. You became able to say no, became resistant in the fact that you would not die saving anyone but yourself. You succeeded in breaking from the subservient shell you once were and grew into something that would bleed for nobody."

"No."

He looks infuriated at Ken's answer.

And then Yamori looks at him, really looks at him with the most unamused expression, both eyes narrowed and sharp. "How did it feel to kill her?"

Touka's heart drops.

Ken is frozen now. The woman knows this by the sudden tense of his muscles. He appears calm, but Touka can tell it's a façade now, to look so business-like; his eyes give his uneasiness away.

"That woman in that prison," Yamori drawls. The brawny man seems exultant now; sickly exhilarated that he's found Ken's tick.

Ken remains scarily mute.

Yamori laughs and it sounds like metal against metal. Touka wants to cover her ears. "You tried to taste the life of a simple human. It didn't work because she found out about you, so you took off her pretty head."

"You're wrong."

"And this woman found out, too. You didn't kill her because you didn't want to make the same mistake. You knew that once Aogiri Tree found out about this 'accomplice' they'd use her to bring you here, so you tried to save her." Yamori sneers. "I had fun picking her apart."

"Stop talking." Ken is clenching his jaw. "This has nothing to do with my family."

"You never would have been able to defend yourself."

"I would've learned."

A scoff. "They were weak."

Ken manages to somehow mellow his features after his unusual, short-lived outburst from earlier despite Yamori's insult. From the outside, he looks more like himself; moonlight illuminates the collected, unmoved and strong look on his face. The change in expression is so fast that Touka almost believes she imagined it.

"That's not true," Ken projects more calmly, tone bitter all the same. "They were doing what they could." A pause. "Until you killed them."

Touka's hands are suddenly ice cold.

Because she realizes it now.

This man didn't just put her through unimaginable emotional pain; he put Ken through it, too.

The revelation is so dumb but makes so much sense that it leaves her breathless. Her lungs won't expand. Her chest feels too tight with an overwhelming amount of harrowing sympathy for Ken and her throat is closing up because _this man_ is the reason why Ken is the way he is, _this man_ set aflame the anguish in his heart, _this man_ killed the real Ken along with his parents.

Touka feels so sick. So idiotic. Ken has been struggling with all this for years upon years; how was she so blind to it all? It makes her feel humiliated and rueful for ever having felt sorry for herself.

_Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid._

Ken's gaze snaps down to hers the moment her muscles go stiff and Touka wants so much to apologize for his losses, apologize for her rash attitude, apologize for everything and she just can't stop wheezing. She can't even open her mouth. No one will ever know that that there's a gap deep in the pit of her stomach pooling with mortification and lament and a strapping, overpowering despair and there's too much humidity, burning and stinging her skin and she can't catch a breath—

The thought is so simple when it slips into her head without warning. So apparent. So simple.

So, so easy.

She's going to kill Yamori.

Ken tightens his hold on her when she starts squirming and kicking the air, arms like bands of iron keeping her in the cage of his grasp and Touka's suddenly screaming, saying things she's never heard herself say before. Ken is telling her to calm down, trying so hard not to hurt her but doing so anyways when his hands clamp a little too hard on her bruised forearms. Touka blinks and stars swarm in her vision and a red hot agony seethes from the tips of her fingers up to her shoulders. She can no longer speak. She's suddenly so exhausted she doesn't have the energy to think.

And it truly terrifies her. It terrifies her what she would do for him.

He's propping her against a tree.

Touka almost doesn't realize it until she feels the sharp brush of grass against the backs of her legs and the hard expanse of bark lining her spine. Ken is saying words Touka can't hear because there's a ringing in her ears and her eyes can't stay open; she's heaving in deep, harsh, gasping breaths, so overcome by a heavy dizziness that she can't speak, can't do anything but try to inhale as much as possible. Her whole body is shaking, her skin is clammy, burning and then cooling off at the speed of detonating dynamite. For a moment she swears Ken's hands are on her shoulders, steadying her—she doesn't know for sure because her eyes are closing and every single thought is blurring at the edges. But when the touch deepens, becomes a little harder, Touka's aware of just how real it is.

The physical connection disappears after a couple seconds and there's what seems to be maniacal laughing. Not from Ken, but from the man. And then the white-haired boy's voice appears and reaches through the static swarming her brain; his tone is so soft, so melodic, so inexplicably tender towards her despite the ferocious indignation he must be hiding.

"I'll be back."

"No." Touka's tongue is made of sand. Her teeth have disintegrated into dirt and her hands into shivering ribbons. "Don't."

Ken says nothing as he clambers to his feet in one swift movement and turns around. Touka can just make out Yamori's blurry form in the distance, grinning and all. And then she watches, captivated, as the small of Ken's back bubbles and squelches and crackles before his kagune is released in the form of four tentacles; flashing vermillion in pulsating waves with a mauve iridescence.

Even though it's her second time seeing it, it's still a wonder to her. How could something so beautiful be so lethal? She wants to stare in awe but can't help but switch to another model of herself, a scared child who wants to keep fading away until she doesn't exist anymore.

Because she can't let him go. Not like this.

Saving her.

She can't. Everything was moving so quickly between them and then it halted to a complete stop. All those thoughts and feelings and her concealed emotions for him frozen in place. And now she's so afraid that if she makes the wrong move, everything will break.

"Please," she calls to him, her voice hideously catching, "I'm scared."

Ken stills at that. The woman can almost see the gears in his head turning as he thinks for a couple seconds.

And then he walks away.

Yamori braces himself for the long-awaited challenge to come.

Touka can hardly breathe. She pulls within the most cavernous and darkest corners of herself for some last snippets of strength, because for some bizarre reason, a primal instinct inside her core is begging her to stay awake. "You can't fight him," the girl hears herself murmur as Ken approaches Yamori, kagune raised, but the words don't feel like her own. Instead, they feel far away, extrasolar, disassociated from her lips. Her voice is barely a breath. She feels anesthetized as if her limbs are paralytic, vacant and useless. Immobile. "You'll die."

Now the world is pivoting on its axis at an enormous amount of speed for the 1000th time and she's visualizing hundreds upon hundreds of series of developments; grotesque, dreadful, gruesome situations that all end with Ken dying. So much fear is building a blockade in the center of her throat that it's causing her eyes to water and her knees to shake. She wants to scream his name, beg him not to leave, but she's losing consciousness so fast she's lost her grasp on reality and she forgets how to move her mouth.

And Touka thinks.

Thinks that this is the funny way of the world, that people like Ken who simply want to live are instead forced to become soldiers.

Thinks how she will never trust again.

Thinks that this has to be the end because her body doesn't feel like a body anymore. She is rotting. Her brain is thawing, her bones are liquefying, she is decaying.

She is human.

She is going to die.

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_**For the last time, everything goes black.**_


End file.
